CHAPTER 2
He was teasing, of course, or at least I hoped so. To my surprise, Alwen bit back, albeit gently.

“Dai, if I am going to be walking barefoot on sand, I want it to be warm”

“Ah, after thirty seconds in that water, you won’t notice”

“After thirty seconds more I’ll be looking at frostbite! Nope, if you get me into water, it has to be coconut palm and coral reef country. Water temperature in the twenties at least, and I mean centigrade not Fahrenheit. No jokes about unwanted body parts, okay? Where are you and Jen off to next, Amina?”

“Oh, the Canaries, again, for all those things that begin with ‘S’. Sun, sea, sand… and of course the most important one”

Omar looked at Scott, and that lad started the guessing.

“Snorkelling? Snogs? Shagging?”

“Sangria, you little man of one-track thoughts”

She paused for a second before adding, “It’s great for cooling off after the passionate bits. Or maybe I mean cooling the passionate bits off afterwards. Same thing, really”

I added my limited contribution.

“What if I don’t want to drink that stuff, love?”

“All the more for me, then. Don’t mind!”

I looked across to Lil, who was slumped comfortably against my namesake, and deliberately chuckled.

“Tom and Connie, now they’re almost as predictable. Static caravan, out by Tenby, but then they’ve got their dogs”

Lil shuddered.

“Not one of those monster sites, all cars and plastic?”

“No, not them. One of our colleagues, his cousin’s got a farm out there. Looks after their van out of season. Now, I know Dai will be off to that Mad Jorka, and the boys here to Sitges or wherever, so where are you two looking at?”

That was when Lil surprised me by blushing, which was as far from her normal style as I would have thought possible. Move on quickly, woman; I scrambled out some nonsense.

“And I assume that actually WILL be Barry! Anyway, clock’s in overtime, so some of us need to get gone. Tom and me, we’re on a late turn next week, so we can’t quiz and no, this particular married couple will not be entering Caroline Street tonight for extras”

Amina raised a hand.

“Only because half of this particular married couple filled the fridge with samosas earlier!”

Marlene was still insisting on calling taxis for late departures, so we were actually driven well away from Chippy Lane, and my wife’s only comment during the ride was a terse “I’ll let you know later, love”

Key in door, chill already starting to bite, and Amina grabbed the bathroom as I checked for any fresh mail. I set two stacked plates carrying a couple of samosas next to the bed, and as she emerged in a long jersey nighty, I took her place to do my teeth and change into my own frumpiness. So much for romance and all that talk about bedroom shoes. She still warmed my side of the bed first, though. I wriggled under the duvet, sitting against the headboard as she passed me one of the plates, with a quiet “Lil, love”

“What about her? Good or bad?”

“Honestly? No idea. She’s… Where are we, Jen? Us two, I mean. Long nighties, snacks in bed; not exactly what the stories would be depicting, is it?”

“You complaining?”

“Course not. Comfy as a comfy thing, this, me. Lil was… Going to start again, love. Lil wanted to ask how we got on, as a couple. As a woman couple, yeah?”

She bit into her samosa, making sure all the flakes went onto the plate or into her mouth, chewed for a while, then swallowed.

“Complicated stuff, Jen. She’s been running over it all for months. A lot of ‘Am I really gay?’ shit, and that then comes with a massive guilt trip cause of her woman’s origins, and no jokes about England, just now., and so there am I, doing PR for the two of us, and don’t worry”

She finished her samosa before turning back to me.

“We had our excitement, love. I like to think we still can. Sod it: we still do. What I was trying to get across to her is the bit about comfort, and she was a bit dreamy-face about that. It was just one thing she asked that worried me slightly, and that was ‘how do you know it’s going to turn out like that?’, and I can’t answer that one fairly. Got suspicions, me, and can’t risk boat-rocking”

“What are you thinking, love?”

“That she’s fallen hard, but she’s looking at comfier shoes than I was on about. And I don’t think she’s had the appropriate words with the other important person, at least not yet”

“Confidence a bit lacking, you think?”

“Oh, most certainly. Hang on a sec”

She set her plate down, reached across for mine and set it on hers, then slithered down into the bed.

“Snuggle, love, and a few things that might sound wrong, so just let me speak, and no jokes, aye?”

I did as asked, and she cuddled into me, head on my chest.

“Lil’s looking at her fiftieth in a very few years, love, and she’s wondering where she’ll be. She looks at us, and she’s, well, I can’t call it jealous, but she’s wondering”

“And what does Jenny say?”

A tighter hug.

“I don’t think she’s asked, love”

“Shit. How much talking have you two done? Old flame stuff?”

“Um, sort of. All a long time ago, love”

Bite back on that, woman. She’s here, and all that’s long over. Warm arms in the present.

“I know that, my love. Her other half?”

“Ah, usual assumptions there, Jen. Suppose it comes from how they met.. I mean, they’re suited, but I think Lil’s seeing it all as her picking up someone vulnerable, can it last, all that shit”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Sorry. See if I have this right, okay?”

“Okay”

“Lil is scared of old age on her own, sees us as the bloody gold standard, but doesn’t believe her girly would be up for that?”

“Yes, basically”

“Oh for fuck’s sake. And she hasn’t asked Jenny?”

“She’s frightened of the answer, love. Lil has a good set of people skills, but she’s a bit like that old socket set of mine. Missing some key bits. Seen it with her before, too many times”

“You been watching her?”

“Not like that. Bit old for me, and then I’m happy where I am, of course. It’s just that she does the same thing each time, and hangs back, and sometimes I don’t think she realises till the woman’s given up and moved on”

“You’re talking about something haven changed, aren’t you?”

“Talking about Jenny, love. Sometimes, when we’ve planned a night out, you don’t turn up till late---shush. I know it’s the job; it’s why I carry a book. When Jen comes over, it can be the same for her, almost, if the bar’s busy. We talk”

“You talk to anybody, love”

“Yup. It’s a skill, one that’s good for work, so once again, shush. Woman’s been in dark places. Lil and her, wasn’t something that should have happened. She was only in the city by chance; meant to be somewhere else”

“Where?”

“Weymouth”

“Oh dear. Dodged a bullet there, then”

“Shush, I said. Got her own worries, and they’re sort of parallel to Lil’s, in that she thinks she’s pushing things, presuming on her welcome and all that crap”

“And?”

“She’s head over, as far as I can tell. Absolutely hooked, but worried Lil isn’t. Same old dance, love”

“Why am I now worried you are having Ideas?”

“Because you know me, love. I have had words already”

“Who with?”

“Marlene, for starters, and then our hosts. Plus Alwen. Ox and the rest. And Jenny”

“Which leaves Lil, I assume?”

“Yeah. Needed to be sure Jen had the necessaries first, and she has. I know Lil went off to Ibiza a couple or three years ago, so am assuming for now”

She snuggled in properly after turning out the bedside light.

“It’ll work or it won’t, no you-me-donkey stuff there. Time for one of the Big Esses, love”

“You got sand in the bed?”

“No, but I need sleep”

I took the hint.

Tom and I were on mid shifts for the next four days, before that switch to late turn, and there was enough variety in the week to keep us ticking along, as well as the usual banter. We were sitting just off the M4 when he brought up photography.

“Connie wouldn’t accept that quiz answer, Jen! Spent three days trying to prove it was bollocks”

He chuckled.

“Geometry is a bloke thing, and the spherical version is a non-starter for her. I finally managed to explain it by cutting an orange in half after drawing a map on it. God forbid I ever have to explain Great Circle routes”

He guffawed then, and that one I understood.

“You’ve been wasting time looking at the flerf sites, haven’t you?”

“Guilty as charged. Latest stuff is hilarious—you can see over the horizon, but only if you’re using a specific make and model of electronic camera”

“Mate, you need to get out more”

“Fills the time, Jen. Hang on: go ahead, Central”

“Where you at, One Five?”

“Asda’s by the traffic management centre, Control”

“Can you start making way towards the Tesco Express at the junction of Northern Avenue and Ty’n y Parc Road? RTC. One reported casualty. Traffic car in attendance”

I took the mike from Tom after clicking in my seat belt, and took over comms.

“What do we have, Control?”

“Potential crush injury, lower leg. Victim not of interest to our colleagues in Traffic, so far”

“So far. Um, five to ten minutes ETA, Control”

“Understood. We’ll confirm that with Traffic and ARU”

I clicked off the mike.

“ARU, Tom? We got naughties as well?”

“Sounds like it. Armed units like to back up Traffic, especially if they’ve not had raw meat for a while. Let’s just get there first, aye? Not quiz night”

He set the disco going as we did a full circuit pf the Coryton Gyratory, only a couple of idiots needing an audible reminder, and then down the long straight of Northern Avenue, the traffic not actually backing up in the way I had expected.

“Central Foxtrot One Five, ETA two minutes, precise location?”

“Exit slip onto Ty’n y Parc from petrol station. Confirm that is the casualty’s current position”

I clicked off again.

“Odd spot for a bilk, Tom”

“Aye, but they said our subject isn’t of interest”

“No schadenfreude, then. Coming up to the lights now; I’ll do a Huey in the exit if there’s room, if not I’ll come in from the pumps”

“Got that. Control, one five: show us on scene”

There was room to cut in past the big sign, and Tom got us turned so that we had full rear access for the lift, and as soon as the wagon was stopped, I was out, Big Green Bag in hand. Four cars in sight, the rearmost being a marked traffic car. Another was a Volvo, with a BMW X5, each of which showed blue lights, while wedged into their embrace was a red and rather elderly Nissan 4X4. Two men were in cuffs, and being searched, and as one of the Officers holding them was our old friend Barry, the scrote’s feet were only technically on the ground. I looked around for Bryn, who was with me almost immediately.

“SP, love?”

“Proactive team there, on an ANPR cruise. Hit for history of bilking and cloned plates. We tucked in to follow, marked unit there joined us for the tug, and they were already at the pumps. We arrived, they rammed the proactive boys—might want to check them over”

“Casualty?”

“Member of public, on his way in to pay for his juice and pick up some shopping. Boys in the Nissan clipped a wall, and Mr Public, before we stopped playing nice and Barry took hm into the wall there. Casualty’s behind the Volvo”

Not good, at first sight, and even worse at second. Tom was quickly with me, then immediately away, to put in a call to our trauma team, while I went through the check list and introductions.

“Now, Naz, I’m Jen. Tom’s my mate. Nice policeman here says we can look after you now, but I need to know a few things first. Have you hit your head at all in this?”

“No, Miss”

“Good. Do you have any pain?”

“Oh yes!”

“On a scale of one to ten, where one is the wrong flavour of mint, and ten…”

“TEN!”

I was already running checks on him, of course, trying not to look too closely at his leg just then, as there was no obvious blood flow. Tom had his own routine.

“Oxy at 84, Jen. Want me to add some gas as well?”

“Please. Naz? Going to put a mask on you. Same sort of thing we give expecting mothers. You’re not pregnant, are you?”

A hint of a laugh. He was going to need a lot more than a hint when that leg came off.

CHAPTER 3
I could hear the sirens now, taking the opportunity to slip a canula in as Tom played with the gas: why add more pain? I couldn’t get my head around the lack of blood flow from that leg, and wanted Naz more than a little out of it before I had a poke. If it was what I suspected, he could risk a toxic shock if and when the juices did start flowing.

Sirens; closer, thank fuck. I dropped a unit of morphine into the patient’s arm before nodding to Tom.

“Cavalry, I hope. I’ll hold off on back boards till we get their decision. On the other hand… Bryn?”

“Aye?”

“Could you tug out the back boards for us? You know where they are. I’m going to be very busy in a few”

As he assured me there were ‘no worries’, I walked away to meet the trauma team, as far out of earshot of Naz as possible, but that meant passing our scrotery, and I got the usual shite about trannies. Barry was rumbling something, so I left it and got to the rapid response car just as the Proper Doctor emerged.

“What we got, Jen?”

“A bad one, Sandip. Given him one unit morphia so far, and Tom is monitoring air and gas. Massive crush injury to lower thigh, knee and lower leg. No arterial flow, however, so I am expecting toxic shock at some point”

I rattled off the rest of the numbers, just as a pair of police carriers arrived to remove my new friends and give us room to work. Sandip had a rapid eyes-on of his own,

“That’s straight to theatre, Jen. One more unit of morphia, then it’s apologies and hurt our friend. Give me thirty seconds while I update Casualty, then get him onboard. I’ll update the Registrar once you’re rolling”

Shit happens in my job, and this was just that. Naz was vocal as we moved him, a soft block either side of his leg, and then Tom played the disco once again until we were offloading the poor sod to what looked like a crash team. As soon as I had listed the analgaesia, he was off, and I was about ready for collapse. Not a good start for any day, or finish, or any part of the shift whatsoever. I was still grumping as Tom and I finished wiping everything down and headed back out for some more lurking with as little intent as possible.

Breathe, woman.

Thankfully, the rest of the shift was a lot less fraught, largely filled by acting as a taxi service for pensioners whose lungs had decided to retire before they had, but neither of us minded that, and there was only one who had difficulty in combining the concepts of ‘oxygen line’ and ‘no smoking’, which took nothing more than the offer of the ‘City Cars’ taxi number before compliance was achieved. And Tom’s evening meal consisted of boiled egg and spring onion sandwiches and half a pork pie.

I made him eat the former outside the cab, but I suspected he would be supplying his own air and gas later that evening. The only hint at further excitement before the end of that shift was a possible concussion from some idiot man riding one of those illegal e-scooters. We dropped off our wagon, and after a quick change of top, I asked at Triage about poor Naz.

“Still in theatre, Jen. Sorry”

Tom squeezed my shoulder.

“Still breathing, then. Best news of the day. Offski?”

“Offski”

We got the rest of his news three days later, via the Surgical Registrar’s office, which was a nice touch. I tried to explain it to Amina that night, but she was still lost by the time I had finished.

“Think of it as being like an old telescope, love. So much damage to the lower leg it was pushed up through where his knee had been, like a bloody tampon. No knee left, of course, but he’s kept the leg”

“Can’t he get a new knee later?”

Not with so much of his tibia and fibula gone, my love. And he still needed to beat the sepsis. Not a bedtime chat.

“Other Jen gone home yet?”

“In the morning, I believe. Any ideas yet?”

“Not as such love. Still cogitating. Oh, and Connie did Tom boiled egg and spring onion sarnies today”

“Oh dear. That’ll be what I can still smell on you”

“Sorry”

“Turn the other way’ I’ll do the spooning”

Morning’s light sandbagged me, but the wife had set the alarm for us, and I was actually a few minutes early for the shift., which was mostly more taxi role-play. The weekend was ahead, and we were on a part of the roster that actually gave us two off in a row, and Amina and I had plans for the Saturday. Naturally, the Friday afternoon threw us the wobbly.

“What we got, Tom?”

“The Hawthorns, Jen. Fall. Possible break. Woman in her eighties, also has kidney issues. Carers have a meds list ready for us. Awake and talking”

“Okay… break?”

“Sounds like left hip, mate”

“Arse. Sorry; not intended. Just thinking, with her age as well”

“I know, Jen. Going to bluelight this one; got one of those niggly feelings”

The place was one of our regular haunts, out in Morganstown, a new-build care home with a decent reputation. The only reason we were regulars there was, of course, the obvious demographic of their clientele, the other habitual callers being funeral directors. Death’s waiting room, with a nice view of Castell Coch. Tom made short work of the journey, and once he was parked up, I was out the door with the Big Green Bag, half expecting to find the patient on the floor, which turned out to be the case. Staff had covered her with a quilt and provided pillows, but thank god they hadn’t tried to lift her into bed.

“Hiya. My name’s Jen; I’m a paramedic. How are we doing?”

Her voice was weak but clear.

“Don’t know how you’re feeling, darling, but I hurt”

“Can you tell me where?”

“All down my side and into my leg”

“On a scale from one to ten can…”

“I know that one. Eleven”

Tom looked in, then went out for the back board, as I scanned the list of meds for contra-indications for analgaesia. Close to, despite her cheery cheekiness, I could see the thin film of sweat on her face.

“What’s your name, love?”

“Cynthia. Cynthia Brewer. You’re a local… girl, aren’t you?”

Shit. Get it out of the way.

“Not what you’re thinking, love. I’ve got PCOS. Polycystic ovaries. Makes me a bit furry”

“Sorry, love. Just, you hear all these stories”

“Well, it wouldn’t matter, anyway, would it? Now, I’m just going to give you something for the pain”

“Already had something for the pain, darling, a stupid bloody fall”

Keep the laughs coming, woman. I gave her an appropriate dose of morphine just before Tom appeared with backboard and trolley. For once, the staff weren’t all tiny women, and I gave some quick instructions before we gently rolled her onto the board, Cynthia screaming weakly as we did so.

“Two, three, LIFT”, and onto the trolley, our patient now whimpering with the pain. Tom slipped a mask onto her, starting ‘gas and air’ as a secondary painkiller, before raising the trolley and leading our way to the rear lift on the ambulance, with a passing word of thanks for the carers.

Same old same old, down the hill to the hospital, blues and twos on but speed held down so as not to bounce Cynthia more than we absolutely had to. We were straight from parking to the Acute Medical Unit by way of Radiography, but five minutes after we had wheeled her into X-Ray the crash team went past us at speed with their own trolley, which is never good.

What is far, far worse is when you see them returning slowly with the crash trolley but no patient. That evening, all Amina asked was the bare minimum before simply wrapping me in her arms after sticking something mindless on DVD into the telly. Which is why I love her.

Our plans for that Saturday went on hold, which was something I did feel guilty about, but we did our best to make up for it with a trip to the Smugglers. Amina surprised me by disappearing for a few minutes outside, but when she returned, she was smiling, oddly with relief.

“Follow my lead, love. Okay?”

“What are you up to?”

“Cunning plans, or at least I hope so. Marlene?”

“Yes?”

“Could we have a quiet word with Lil, if you can spare her?”

“Only if you promise to return her unsullied and with no further blemishes”

“Would I do that sort of thing to her?”

“I have no idea, but Moi is always on solids, so it’s not relevant. Lil! Sort the ambulance chaser out”

Our friend was soon slumped on a spare stool at our table.

“You rang?”

Amina nodded sharply.

“You drink sangria?”

“Not when working”

“Would you drink it if you weren’t working?”

“What are you plotting?”

“Right. Now, please don’t think I’ve been sneaking around…”

“But that means you have. Get to the point”

“Well, me and Jen here, place we’ve booked for four weeks’ time was advertised here. In the pub”

“And?”

“Owners are friends of Debbie Prosser”

“And?”

“Well, only place they had left when we booked was a two-bedroom unit”

“No way I could afford that, if you’re offering what I think you are”

Amina snatched a quick look at me, and there was definitely a hint of ‘I’ve been naughty’ in it.

“Yes, well. Debbie, she has friends. Her friends have friends. And I spoke to Jen, your Jen. And she has friends. You have visited her place, I know”

“Once. Train fares…”

“Here’s the deal. Accommodation’s paid for, and your Jen is up for this. You just get the train over to hers”

“Excusez Moi”

Marlene was looming over the table, trying not to look smug.

“Please complete the rest of the villain monologue. I’m all ears”

Amina shrugged.

“Yeah, sort of a plot, in reality. Jen knows someone over her way who works for the airport there. They get discount flights, and Jen can get two tickets for a lot less than normal. She’s up for the trip if you are, AND she can cover both tickets, so you just need to cover getting from here to Gatwick and back”

“Yeah, but…”

“Lil, shut up and, just this once, listen to Moi. I can read your mind: ‘why would Jen do that for me?’, and it makes me want to shake some bloody sense into you. Debbie… you mentioned Deb, Amina, and she spent too many years on her own because she was frightened, because she didn’t feel anyone could love her…”

“But her and Frank…”

“There very nearly WAS no ‘her and Frank’, Lil. Long story, private details, but just think, for once. Just make an old but perfectly preserved queen happy and say yes. Back room and phone her, now. Oh, and I’ll cover the rail tickets”

CHAPTER 4
Lil sat in silence for a few seconds, staring at the mug of tea Alwen had just delivered. When she did speak, it was far more hesitant than I was used to hearing from her.

“What if… This is all sponging, stuff, yeah? If…”

She stopped once again, clearly seeking the right words before trying once again.

“If this is meant to be the start of proper things, proper COUPLE things, aye? How can I start on the basis of her paying for everything? And what if it doesn’t work out? How do I pay you all back?”

She looked across at her colleague, wincing slightly.

“I mean, look at Alwen there, and Maria. Both young, both students. Equal depth to their pockets, isn’t it, and a lot more of their lives ahead to come back from bad choices”

Alwen winced.

“Not now, Lil. I mean, shit… I can’t even go home without having to change clothes and try to remember, you know. Parents’ home, I mean. Everywhere else, even college, and then… I just don’t know”

That was when I saw a lot of what the other Jenny must have seen in Lil, because her whole focus visibly shifted, and it was now on Alwen.

“What don’t you know, love?”

Marlene sniffed.

“Bloody social worker, I am. It’s quiet, and Ox has the bar. Out with it, girl”

The younger woman slumped into a chair almost as heavily as had Lil.

“You’re going to wonder…”

Marlene took her hands in hers.

“If you think I was too pushy that night…”

Alwen shook her head, emphatically.

“No. I needed that shove. I thought… Jen, she had a dress for me, LBD thing, and it was all my choice, but in the end, well, no choice, really. Marlene, I remember thinking that first step down the stairs, aye? First step to real life. Cliché, of course, but you know… You’re all my friends, aren’t you?”

Amina put her hand on top of Marlene’s.

“You really ask yourself that, Alwen? I think, really, you know the answer, don’t you?”

“Um… Yeah. I suppose I do. It’s just, well, I need reassurance, far too often. It’s so many things, aye? Am I real? I don’t do all those things---look, I don’t really use make-up, and I am SO not into jewellery, and… It was something Mam said, about bringing friends home, family home, aye? Not to bring men anywhere near her”

Lil burst out laughing, a bloody good sign.

“Tell me all about THAT one, woman!”

“Yeah, but, well. Lot of shit from the gender clinic, I’ve heard. Am I really a woman if I don’t fancy men? And her friend, and that Aussie lad, so bloody loved up it should come with a sugar tax levy. And Maria is just so, so, persistent”

Marlene’s voice was still soft.

“I can warn her off, if you’d like”

“I… I don’t know, Marlene. I mean, she’s nice enough, and, well, it’s more me than her. Nothing downstairs for her, not like there was for me. Er, sorry; that was meant to sound clever. Look, I just don’t know. I just feel there’s pressure on me from every bloody direction, and it is messing my head up. Sorry, Lil. This was meant to be about helping you, not sorting me out”

Lil shrugged.

“Want me to tell the truth? You just have, love. Perspective helps, realising my plate is a lot less loaded than other people’s”

A sharp laugh, before she added, “And that didn’t come out the way I meant to, but you catch my drift. Tell me about this hotel place, Jen…”

Tom and I were back on the road on the Monday morning, and it was almost like a replay of the Lil and Alwen show, as he seemed a little withdrawn. We parked up in a favourite spot, by the Brooklands retail centre, and I popped into Greggs for a couple of sausage rolls and some coffee, hoping he’d stir himself into life if I offered him a few minutes alone. No joy.

“Tom?”

“Aye?”

“You okay? Very quiet, butt”

“Ah, Jen. Just thinking, yeah?”

“What about? If you want to tell me, of course”

“Ah, well… My driving, aye?”

“And what’s wrong with it?”

“I was too… If I’d pushed it a bit harder, that old woman, Cynthia, maybe she’d not have arrested. Might have survived…”

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

“Tom, can you remember exactly why we kept the speed down? And yes, WE! She had a broken hip, and she was eighty bloody six, and it was her second heart attack, and we can’t always bloody win, can we? We, WE, did OUR best, and nothing would have been enough. How many RTC deaths have we seen?”

“More than enough, but they’re different”

“No they bloody aren’t. There are just some occasions when there’s nothing more we, or anyone else, can do. You have to…”

“Foxtrot One Five, Foxtrot One Five, Central”

I took the handset, for once quicker than Tom.

“Go ahead, Central”

“What’s your location, Jen?”

“Brooklands retail park, stationary. What do you have?”

“An urgent one. Report of middle-aged woman, breathing difficulties. Called in by M.O.P. M.O.P. is staying with her for now, so far””

“So far. Location?”

“Outside the Highfields, Caerau Road. No, she wasn’t in the pub”

“Understood. On way”

“Thanks, Jen. Update when and if we can”

“Understood. Out”

I hung up, as Tom fired up the light and sound, and his driving this time took no prisoners, maybe to compensate for what he saw as his failings with Cynthia. I had to keep one hand on the grab handle as we made warp speed through at least two red lights, and in a stupidly short time we were turning of Heol Trelai and pulling up by the pub, where a gaggle of early drinkers was sitting well apart from two women, with no apparent concern, on the picnic tables in front of the building. Tom spun us round, reversing up towards a low wall but making sure to keep enough space for trolley and lift. One of the women was straight across to us, waving a mobile phone, and I did my best to let Tom collar her as I went straight to what was clearly our patient, and, shit: cyanosis.

“Tom! Bottle and mask!”

He disengaged from our Member Of Public, and in thirty seconds I had the oxygen flowing and, thank god, the change in her colour was almost instant, like the sun coming up. I waved across to M.O.P., and she settled down beside the casualty, handing her the phone. I clipped on the blood oxy meter---shit, not at all good.

“Hi, I’m Jen, that’s Tom. I’d like to leave this lady to breathe for a while, but if you don’t mind, could you tell me what you know?”

Her eyes were just starting to leak, so I kept the smile going.

“What do I call you, love?”

“I’m Glenys. Glenys Shaw. I don’t know this lady”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing, really. She was just sitting on the wall, with her phone out. Couldn’t speak, aye? So I took the phone, realised it was on nine nine nine, so finished the call. Thought I’d stay by, see she was all right. Helped her onto this seat. Nothing, really”

Once again, for god’s sake. ‘Nothing’?

“Glenys, thank you. Trust me, it wasn’t ‘nothing’, so you can feel proud today. This lady was turning blue when we arrived, which is not a good colour for skin. Can you manage a few words, love? Can we maybe have a name? Tom’s just getting the stretcher on wheels, and then we’ll run you into St Dai’s”

She fumbled in her handbag, pulling out her purse, which held a driving licence. Hannah Saunders, aged… right, sixty-four, and from about two hundred yards away.

“Trolley, Tom. Do you think you can stand, Hannah? Just need a few steps, then we’ll settle you on the trolley. I’ll keep the oxygen on”

She patted my hand before holding up hers: wait. A search in her handbag produced a scrap of paper, and I passed her a pen as she scribbled her name, address and a ‘thank you’ for Glenys, who was now starting to weep. A quick hug, and then onto the trolley, up on the lift and then her oxy line switched to the ambulance’s feed. Tom wasn’t as manic this time, but he was definitely in full blues-and-twos mode. I called in the numbers, and we were straight through triage to a space in one of the corridors, and amazingly only waited ten minutes after the canular went into her arm before she was in a bay in Casualty and awaiting a bed in the Acute Medical Ward and a CT scan.

I finally pulled Tom away, as he seemed determined to keep watch on her, almost as if he could heal her by sheer presence and force of will.

“Queue to unload, butt. We need to move. Come on”

I almost pushed him out to our wagon, and we found a space in the Severn Road car park before ringing in an order to the Jamaican place up the road. Once that was done, I started, gently, on Tom.

“Feeling better, now?”

He nodded.

“We got that one right, Jen. Thoughts?”

“Oh, bloody obvious ones, love. Without Glenys, she’d have been toast. Those pissheads at the pub weren’t exactly rushing to help, were they?”

“What do you think, diagnosis, like?”

“They start drinking first thing, they get pissed”

“No. Hannah”

“Ah, that one, well, a guess. Her airways were fine, and lungs were taking in lots of air, so got to be something like an embolism. Probably pulmonary. I gave her a shot of warfarin, just in case”

“Poor woman”

“Yeah, well, nature of our job, butt. Now, got your cash, and I’ll go and grab the food. Can you give Central a shout, drop a subtle hint so we don’t have to drop our food”

The smile that came back made me feel a lot better about him. Four weeks later, we saw Lil off on a slow train to Gatwick, and Amina and I started packing for sun, sea and sangria. Sorry, Tom: bugger caravan parks.

CHAPTER 5
Amina and I flew from Cardiff, thankfully, rather than Bristol, but we’d chosen to ride on the number 304 bus, which always takes an age for the journey. We got to see Barry, though, which was…

“They did that series here, Jen”

“Which one?”

“Being Human”

“The ghosts and vampires thing?”

“And werewolves, love. Filmed it in Barry”

“Thought it was in Bristol?”

“To start with, yeah, but when they changed the cast, and that bloke with the ears left, it was moved to Barry. Not sure if that was an upward or downward move. Anyway, only a few more stops”

“Get a bloody cab next time, love”

“No arguments from me. I think my arse is already asleep, and we’re not even on the plane yet. I’ll need a massage when we get to the hotel. Hint hint”

“Well, the other two will be in the air by now, so might have to wait till we settle them in first”

“Bad timing, that. Would have been nice to have the whole unit to ourselves for a bit”

“A bit of what?”

“Cheeky!”

We emerged from the bus, finally, and yawned and stretched our way through check-in and bag drop before a short session grazing in the departure lounge, eyes on the big board. A gate number eventually appeared, and twenty minutes later we shuffled down the airbridge to our plane. There was the usual juggling game, until our bums were on our seats, our belts fashioned, and, at last, the plane was heading out on the taxiway. Yes: I do know all the technical terms, because one of our responsibilities, Tom and I, is to collect medical emergencies from the airport.

Sometimes, there’s no hurry. Or rather, there is no longer a need for it. Only twice, however, have we had to use a scissors lift to remove a casualty who had ceased to be a patient, and whose journey had reached a different destination to that intended.

I fell asleep right after we levelled out, which was one reason Amina gave me the window seat, thus avoiding the need to climb over me for any reason, such as a full bladder. She shook me awake once she had spotted land, and the seat belt light had sparked to life. Seats upright, tray tables away, etc, and then a bang, with rather a bit of rocking, and we were down. We left the plane by airstairs and squeezed onto one of those waddling airport tarmac coaches for the ride to the terminal, where the bloody Spanish made us queue for ages just to get a passport stamp.

Finally, though, we were able to get our bags through the automatic doors into the Arrivals area, where Amina spotted Lil and Jenny waving at us from a sort of café space. Jenny in particular seemed absolutely serene.

“Good flight, you two?”

I shrugged.

“No idea. Busy week, so I was out of it at wheels-up. Ask Amina”

My wife snorted.

“Could just about see past her, so I saw some of the ground”

Lil was shaking her head.

“Too much of that flight was over the sea. Bugger all to look at. And when did they stop doing meals?”

Amina’s eyebrows went up in amazement.

“When did you last fly, Lil?”

“Can’t remember. At least twenty years ago”

“Well, there’s at least one grasping tosser who wants to charge for using the toilet. That’s why you always, ALWAYS check the ‘extras’ rather than just looking at the lead price”

Jenny grinned, not entirely happily.

“That’s why I went to my friend Caroline and got tickets at employee rates. It’s… There’s other shit, too. When Lil and I met, I was on a short break. So many places I wanted to go, but when you travel solo, they really do screw you for every penny”

Amina softened her words as best she could, after a glance at me.

“If you had gone to one of those other places, you wouldn’t have met, you two. Anyway, the hotel’s supposed to have a transfer minibus. Shall we get rolling?”

The information desk was surprisingly helpful, especially compared to the Spanish Customs people, and we were soon at the appropriate stand. Ten minutes after we sat down in some well-appreciated shade, a fifteen-seater rolled up. Together with four other passengers we loaded our bags and were off, initially along a reasonably modern dual carriageway, passing through terrain that looked like a cross between a disused quarry and some of the rover footage from Mars, just with added scraps of moribund shrubbery. That finally gave way to an urban area, initially well=spaced, and then into a somewhat more constricted collection of high rises and ‘motel-style’ hotel complexes. We pulled up in front of one of the latter, a rainbow flag fling over the sign ‘Two Canny Lads’, and one of the men riding us remarked, rather archly, “Anyone would think there might be gay people around”.

His companion sniffed.

“As if! I shall save you from them if you spot any”

“More like save them all for yourself, you mean. Pool’s waiting, time’s wasting”

The four other arrivals were all friends, and at the hotel reception two local girls worked through their booking as an older Geordie man did ours.

“And, just to help with our marketing, can you tell us how you heard about our hotel?”

I waved at the others.

“We all go into a pub in Cardiff, the same pub, I mean. They have leaflets there, your leaflets”

The man grinned happily.

“Smugglers, by any chance? I think I’ve seen one of you there… Lily?”

She nodded.

“Lil, but yes. I work there”

“You’ll know some of our friends, then. Debbie Prosser? Diane Sutton and her crew?”

I couldn’t help laughing at that.

“How could anyone NOT know Deb? I mean, they’ve got the pub quiz game sewn up between them, and Di’s lot, well, all the rest. I shall just say ‘Gemma’ and ‘pastries’ and leave it there. I try and plan routes to avoid that shop, when I’m working. This is my missus Amina, I’m Jen, and so is my non-wife here”

“Hi, then. A bit like Trumpton, that. I’m Graham, him indoors is Malcolm, and what can I tell you about the area? Usual question the girls are just answering over there is ‘where’s the best gay bar’, and we do indeed have one in the hotel”

Amina took my arm, with just a bit of a hint in her squeeze of it.

“Don’t know about the others over there, but I don’t think cruising is what we’re after. Decent food, maybe some music that isn’t too shit?”

“Well, we actually have a little local map Malcolm drew up. I can send it to your phone; it’s interactive”

“Please. Now, are we about ready for me to drag her away and get her out of her clothes… and into her cossie for the pool?”

Graham laughed in appreciation.

“I see you fit right in at that pub! Here’s your room keys--- I’ve done four. There’s a room and area guide by the telly, with our wifi code, as well as all our mealtimes and room service menu, and there’s a fridge. Jug of sangria awaits you there”

The rooms, or apartments rather, were spread around a courtyard holding a reasonably-sized and immaculate pool, and the accommodation itself consisted of a central living room with attached mini-kitchen and shower/toilet wet room. The bedrooms were either side, each with a window facing in towards the pool rather than out towards any traffic noise, which was a nice touch. Amina pushed me into one of the bedrooms, closing the door behind her.

“Strip. Change. Then I am pouring the cold wet stuff, so if you want any, get moving. Capisce? That’s yer ackshull Spanish, that is!”

“Er, I think it was actually Italian, love”

“Move!”

I did as ordered, Amina moving so much more quickly than me, and after a quick bagging of sunscreen, towels and other stuff, we entered the living room just as Lil and Jenny appeared. We sort of matched, as both Lil and I were wearing what the shop had called tankinis, while the others were in more abbreviated two-piece costumes, Amina’s leaving very little for the imagination to guess at.

Jenny was much leaner, of course, but while her hips were not really as wide as, well, as she might have wished, her top was…

Put those thoughts away, woman.

Amina had found two large jugs in the fridge, and before we braved the sun we did indeed sample, fully, the fruity goodness. Amina was looking at the guide app Graham had sent her.

“First thing tomorrow, girls, or this evening if we have the energy, we hit the local supermercado---and that IS Spanish, love---to top up our supplies. Box or six of the wet stuff, and some fresh fruit to slice into it. What are we doing for food tonight?”

Lil sighed.

“I hope you’re not after staying out all night? I, for one, am shattered already”

Amina waved the room service menu.

“They do bar meals here, girls. Quite a range, including a tapas selection. That’s for me, anyway. Happy to go with the flow”

Staying in seemed to be the consensus, so once we had done sufficient justice to the cold drink, we were off into the ‘how bloody hot is this?’ of the courtyard. There were enough free sun loungers, and as I stared up into the oddly pale sky, I could see small clouds scudding past in what was clearly quite a stiff breeze, although we were fully sheltered by the surrounding buildings. The pool water was just right, at least for half-floating, face turned up and eyes closed. I just lazed there, losing complete track of time, until Amina splashed me.

“Out and get sun creamed, love. Not spending the whole holiday with a piece of pickled beetroot. Same for you two and, don’t even think it: yes, I still need sunscreen!”

The food that evening was more than adequate, our bed was comfy, and in the end, as we heard from the other bedroom, it appeared that the only ones of those five words beginning with ‘s’ the other two had left to tick were ‘sand’ and ‘sea’.

As long as we could keep that mood going, it looked like being a good holiday.

CHAPTER 6
That day was one for bimbling. Sunscreen slathered, floaty dresses and floppy hats donned, or shorts and T-shirt in Lil’s case, and it was a slow amble past a wide variety of shops and tourist traps, with the occasional pause for ice cream, or a cold soft drink. We eventually emerged at the seafront, where all the usual sorts of souvenir cabins and eateries lined one side of a broad footpath, the other dropping onto a sort of beach.

I say ‘sort of’, because while there was quite a bit of sand, the waterline looked like gravel. Beyond the gravel was a broad rock ledge; sweeping golden sands were most definitely not the local thing. Jenny (I had decided that I would be the short form) stared at the black slabs.

“That’s lava, isn’t it? Old lava flow”

I pointed inland, past some high rise blocks to a much higher rise of land.

“Sodding great volcano there. Might have something to do with things. Now, I think we need footwear options”

Three puzzled faces looked back.

“Water shoes, girls. Sandals you can swim in. Not walking on that stuff with bare feet, and I am certainly not spreading my towel on it. One of those tat shops will have the necessaries. You got any goggles or anything, Lil?”

“Um, no. Didn’t think”

“Then think”

Ten minutes later, and we had our needful things, and I volunteered to take the first shift of towel sitting while the other three hit the water. I was a bit disappointed with the beach, to be honest; my dreams had been of gentle waves, white sands and waving palms. The palms were there, even though cropped, but not my beach. I settled back with more than a little satisfaction, though, closing my eyes and luxuriating under blue (ish) skies and a most un-Welsh warm sun. When my turn for a swim came, it was most definitely not like Barry.

We worked a rotation from toasting on our spread towels to cooling in the shallow waves, with the obligatory attempts to drown each other, which was when I discovered that Lil---LIL!---had a very piercing squeal. Work was centuries away, cares washed out of my soul in the salt water. There were clouds, mostly drifting over from the big volcano, but they were clouds, no more, rather than warnings of an imminent replay of Pompeii. Our lunch was made up of bits and pieces from a seafront ‘minimarket’, and all was right with the world.

We set off back for the hotel at around five, and as we called at reception, Graham asked how our day had been. Amina was as direct as ever.

“Beach isn’t exactly great, is it? All congealed lava”

“Really? Where did you go?”

“Las Americas beach. Where else?”

“Well, if you’d gone south rather than west, there are some proper beaches there. Sand, aye? Not as good as my old place, but the sea’s warmer”

He laughed out loud at his own words.

“When I say ‘warmer’, like, it’s a bit like saying the Arctic can be a bit on the chilly side”

Lil perked up just then.

“That old place of yours. Was that where Mike was talking about? Friend of Debbie’s, he is. Took his family up that way for a tour”

“Whereabouts?”

“Maz—his wife, aye? She said something about a boat out to some little islands, with seals and things”

“The Farnes?”

“Sounds like the name”

“We’re not far from there. I was a farmer, dairy herd. Just back from the beach. Hang on…”

He turned to his laptop, pulling up the maps, and then the street view.

“That’s our beach. Dunstanburgh”

Amina eased past me for a closer look.

“Why couldn’t you just bring that with you?”

“Ah, it’s miles long. Would have cost a bit in hold baggage fees. Now, the better beaches here are…”

He pointed them out on the screen, passing us a timetable for local transport, then asked where were eating that evening. Lil stared at Jenny for a few seconds, getting a nod, and then turned to Graham.

“What you said the first evening, about the best gay bars? Well, we, me and Jen here, we don’t fancy that sort of scene right now. Just decent food, and somewhere to sit and natter”

Amina had her hand up.

“And booze, of course!”

Lil raised an eyebrow, archly.

“Well, duh!”

Graham nodded.

“One good rule of thumb is not to eat anywhere with pictures of the food up as you go in. Spanish, local, international or Brit food?”

I shrugged.

“Local, for me. There’s a difference between local and Spanish?”

“Yup. Lots of African influence here, plus what became Spanish Caribbean stuff, as well as historic things from before the Spanish came. Hang on…. Got a leaflet…”

He passed us a list of the main local specialities, then looked at the clock.

“Drink before you go out, ladies?”

Jenny laughed.

“Shower the salt off first, be like, then hydrate. Sangria for me!”

I thanked Graham and led the way to our little place, where we decided that we could all save water by showering in pairs, before all adopting ‘comfy’ gear rather than ‘smart’ and settling down to the big jug of cold fruitiness the bar staff had ready for us. Jenny had clearly been paying attention, for as the first sips went down, she started a little lecture about traditional eating places.

“I have a particular place in mind, if that’s okay. Local cuisine, but a big emphasis on seafood”

Amina perked up, as is her way.

“Are we talking tentacles?”

Jenny nodded.

“If I have it right, LOADS of tentacles. They also do it as tapas, which is unusual. Apparently, tapas is more a Spanish and tourist thing. Means we get a chance to taste more things”

I looked at Amina, who was clearly reading my mind, as usual, and she simply nodded. I squeezed her hand, just to let her know.

“Jenny?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I make another suggestion?”

“Course”

“Then why don’t we look for a bar with seating on the seafront, and finish the evening there after eating? I don’t think any of us is really out for a rave”

Lul muttered something about her age and her back, and Amina sniffed, before a mock sulk.

“No slow smoochy dances for me, then? Typical. Marriage really does kill romance!”

Jenny chuckled, then looked at our now-empty jug.

“Shall we get rolling, then?”

The place turned out to look pretty drab from the outside, but once in the door it turned out to be a large courtyard, covered by a trellis with some sort of climbing flowery plant all over it. The floor was a little uneven, and the chairs were metal, so every time someone moved there was a bit of a screech. At least the table we were given didn’t rock. We were left with four full laminated menus, what was clearly a separate ‘fixed price’ deal on a piece of A4 paper and a couple of drink lists.

“You English? Deutsch? Nederlands?”

Lil answered for us all, “Welsh!”, which seemed to leave our waitress rather confused, so I added, “Next to England, it is”

“Oh! Scotsia? Earlanda? Galless?”

Jenny solved that one, and we put our drinks orders in. When our woman returned with the first round, she brought a little Welsh flag on a stick which she placed in the pottery vase thing that held the cutlery. She grinned happily at our reaction.

“Is my hijo, si? My son. He work in Barcelona and plays the rugby game. All flags for Copa--- World Cup, he was here for vacation. We did special nights”

She left us, with a smile, and I started to look through the main menu as Jenny hauled out a bundle of paper that turned out to be a sort of idiot’s guide to the local food. Amina looked up from her cold beer with a frown.

“Don’t remember Spain in the World Cup”

Lil shrugged.

“Ah, they qualified, for the last two, I think, but they had a ding-dong with Romania, and it turned out that one of their players was on a false passport, so they got the boot. What? I’m Welsh! Played when I was a bit younger, but past it now”

Jenny was shaking her head, a hint of a grin showing.

“That’s two of us, then. I was made to play at school, but it was never my thing. Not to play, anyway”

Not bloody surprising, was my thought. Every so often some comment like that emerged, and I would realise how easy my life had actually been, despite my PCOS and other issues. Change the subject, Jen.

“Jenny? What’s good on that list of yours, and how does it compare to what’s offered on the menu?”

“Oh…. Right…hang on a sec… Yup”

She put her papers down on the table next to one of the plastic-covered menus and started talking through the specialities, and in the end we each settled for a main dish along with a drift of little platters to share, and it turned out to be almost too much to finish, which is always the problem with tapas. ‘Ooh, that looks nice, and so does that, and…’ doesn’t always finish on a note of ‘Anyone want this last bit of tentacle before I grab it?’ but more often with a variation of ‘If I have any more, I’ll be ill’. If we were looking to spend some time chilling on the seafront, I preferred to do so with room to spare in the tank.

Bill paid, arms linked and a slow, slow stroll through the warm darkness back to our first beach, where there were a couple of bars with open-air seating just behind the seafront promenade, which seemed like a plan to us all. As we approached, I was delighted not to hear some over-pumped sound system churning out shit music, and then there was a free table, just inside the little fence that marked off the seating area. Lil muttered something to Jenny as we sat down, and that one called across to me and Amina with a grin.

“Professional complaint, she says. People should have to go to the bar, not sit round like, what was it, love? Oh yes: little lazy sacks of laziness? Yeah, like little sacks et cetera, waiting to be served”

Amina settled back in her seat, clearly trying for her best Richard E Grant.

“I want the finest sangria known to humanity, and I want it here and I want it now”

Lil shook her head.

“Not me. Anyone fancy sharing a bottle of cava?”

My wife perked right up.

“Forgot about that, I did! Me for the fizzy as well, then”

I gave her the usual eyebrows.

“Does fizz go with tentacles?”

“Dunno. Gonna find out!”

I caught a slurred voice, almost a whisper.

“Yebbut, mate, only one of them’s a wog”

The comment had come from outside the fenced-off seating, and from its intonation, I assumed it wasn’t actually meant for us. At least, I hoped it wasn’t. I saw Lil’s head rise, her eyes narrowing, and then they were there, leaning over the little railing.

“Evening, ladies!”

There were three of them, one in a Chelsea shirt, another in an England football top and the spokesman in St George’s flag tee that left the lowest part of a hairy gut exposed.

“You English?”

Chelsea stage-whispered to Four Lions, “Apart from the Paki, course”, while George tried to charm us.

“Want some company, ladies?”

Amina had that poised look that always worried me, and her tone was brittly cheerful.

“We’ve already got company, thank you”

“Oh? Where they at, then?”

I caught the word ‘sheepshaggers’ from Chelsea just as Jenny rose from her seat with a whispered “Ladies’”, trotting off to the bar. My hearing was still on alert mode, for the next word that jumped out, from Lions, was ‘tranny’. Bugger. Amina was ramping up, well into attack mode.

“We’re our own company, thanks. Now, I’m sure you… LITTLE boys have got somewhere more important to be. Past your bedtime, I think”

George spread his arms wide, with an utterly false grin.

“Dykes!”

Lions held up a finger.

“That one’s a tranny, so does it count?”

Chelsea was swaying slightly.

“Dunno, lads. Need to see them do some dyking to be sure. Go on, then!”

Amina cocked her head.

“Go on what?”

“With tongues, yeah? Bit of snogging!”

“Why don’t you just fuck right off, you fat stinking English arsehole?”

“Bit rich from a fucking Paki rugmuncher!”

Just as he went to push over the railing, Jenny was back, this time with what were clearly a couple of kitchen staff, one of them with a meat mallet in his hand. Behind them stood what I assumed was the owner, who turned to us with a slight bow and then spoke politely, with a strong Birmingham accent.

“My apologies, ladies” were his first words, before he turned to the three men.

“I told you to fuck off two nights ago. I haven’t forgotten your faces, and I won’t. Fuck off now, while you still can, right?”

George tried to argue, but Lions was tugging his arm, and in the end all we got was a load more abuse, but thankfully they were retreating. Our real new friends stayed with us, the owner turning to apologise once more.

“Sorry, ladies. There’s always a few scrotes to spoil the atmosphere, but don’t let it put you off. You ordered your drinks?”

Lil nodded.

“Two bottles of cava, four glasses”

“Right. I’ll get that moving for you”

As he turned to leave, the first empty beer bottle smashed a few feet outside the fence, and he sighed.

“Never learn, do they?”

A second crash of breaking glass was followed by some shouting, and he pointed towards the three drunks, just as a squad of local police piled into them with what was clearly an excess of enthusiasm.

“I warned them two nights ago, and I warned them it would be the filth if they came back. Your mate Jen here, she gave me enough time to press the panic buzzer. Direct link to the local cop shop. That’s their holiday over, oh dear, how sad, never mind. Now, want some nibbles with your fizz? I’ll just get someone to clear that glass, and then we can all relax”

Jenny sighed.

“Can I REALLY go to the loo now?”

Once she was out of earshot, Lil leant in closer.

“Tranny, eh?”

Amina squeezed my hand, before bringing it to her lips for a kiss.

“It’s the PCOS, Lil. We get it a lot”

“Well, bloody good job Jen was at the bar, then. I haven’t punched anyone in years, but he was working me up to it”

I squeezed my wife’s hand in return, then smiled at the other woman.

“Which one were you going to punch?”

“Which one first, you mean? Does it matter? Oh, and I know you caught what Jen called me”

Amina and I looked at each other, and my beloved showed what had made me fall for her in her next question.

“Not putting you on the spot, Lil, but how do you feel?”

“Me? To be honest, a bit stupid. Marlene’s been on my case, all of Deb Prosser’s crew as well. I mean, just now; we’re getting ready for a punch-up, and she’s cleared off, just long enough to call the cavalry, though, and then she’s back with us. I mean, what more do I want?”

Amina smiled, so, so gently.

“And she wants you, Lil”

“Yeah. It’s that old imposter thing. I’m worthless, et cetera, et cetera, not good enough for her”

“And yet you are the one she says she loves, so you can’t be worthless, aye?”

“Aye. She’s on her way back, okay? Sort the glasses out, girls, while I do the cork”

She eased the first one with only the faintest of pops, the professional that she was, and poured the first round.

“Here’s to us, ladies, and to a lovely holiday, and one from me to you, Jen, my love”

CHAPTER 7
Jenny looked a little surprised at that, and I realised how much of Lil’s problem went both ways. How must a trans woman feel, when so much of the world was shouting that same ‘imposter’ directly into her face? I did a rapid blessings count, giving my wife’s hand a squeeze, before waving in the general direction of our departed arseholes.

“Men, ey? Who’d have’em?”

Jenny stared down at her glass.

“Who’d be one?”

Amina slapped her arm.

“Well, none of us are, so it’s a moot point, eh, girls? Now, I don’t plan on getting blotto tonight, so does anyone have any suggestions for tomorrow?”

Jenny was almost blushing, and she looked across at Lil before taking her hand, with a whispered, “You sure?”

Lil just nodded, then grinned in a more than slightly fragile way.

“Going to take a guess here, cause when we met, she was actually on a birdwatching trip. This idea that all of us can see you have, love, would it involve that?”

A rather hesitant nod was followed by what was clearly a swig of her wine rather than a sip.

“I saw a leaflet at the hotel for a four-wheel drive tour. Goes through some of the weirder bits of landscape, but it’s also aimed at the natural stuff. Cactus, lizards, odd rock stuff”

Amina grinned happily.

“Birds as well?”

“Well, some”

“And when we get back?”

Jenny perked up immediately.

“Um, the various words beginning with S?”

I stuck my oar in.

“Sun, sea, sand and sangria?”

The woman was suddenly blushing like a stop light, and Amina just giggled.

“We’ll leave that one unsaid, then. Now, who else has the munchies? After those three idiots, I rather fancy a nibble on some pork balls…”

I held a hand up.

“Don’t know what they’re called, but they do a sort of crispy crab ball, with the pincher sticking out”

My wife corrected me with a sniff and the word “Pincer, love”, to which I gave the obvious response.

“Never, ever been pinsed, but I HAVE been pinched more than once. Sometimes by bloody patients”

Lil shuddered.

“New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, that’s one of the worst times. Same for you?”

“Well, a lot more when I was working in a place for straights. Now, it’s a toss-up. If they’re lucky, it’s a right hook from me. A bit less lucky, and it’s a left from Ox”

Amina did her best expectant face, and Lil grinned.

“Yeah, shit out of luck gets the full Marlene experience. Then again, did you hear about Gemma?”

“Pastries Gemma? Jen and me, we love her stuff”

“Lots of folk do. Some lad got leery in the queue, apparently, usual shit. Young lad that knew her slightly stepped in, and they flattened him. Turned out the rest of the queue was loaded”

We all did our own ‘expectant’ faces, and Lil laughed again, far more freely.

“Well, Rhys and Candice were there for starters”

Jenny looked confused, so Amina cleared things up.

“Two of our regular coppers. Blonde woman, and big, big man”

Lil nodded.

“Yup. The one with the big scar on his face. Bish, bosh, nicked. You know the Bakers, at our quizzes? Deb’s lot? Gemma’s one of theirs. And speaking of food, I see tapas approaching”

It was the owner again, with a collection of little plates. Amina reached for a couple, already up to full speed in grilling him about being a Brummy in the Canaries.

“You met the wife, I saw. Boy’s off at Uni on the mainland, but at least I got him into rugby rather than Villa or the Baggies. Short version is that I was always out here for holidays, met the missus-to-be, decided to stay”

Jenny was looking at her lover, clearly thinking of possible parallels, when Amina asked the obvious question about family, friends and upheaval. Our new friend simply grinned.

“Have you ever been to Brummagem? If you had, you’d understand. Enjoy!”

The next morning’s hangover was barely noticeable, so breakfast was a relief rather than a chore. Jenny’s excursion was due to start at ten, so we had time to sort a day pack each with water and some fruit before our driver was parking up. The vehicle turned out to be a well-used Landrover County, with rather larger tyres than I was used to, the driver looking rather like a walnut of indeterminate age.

“Good morning! I am Felipe! Call me Phil, please. Your first time on the islands?”

I shook my head.

“Not for me and Amina here, but I think it is for these others”

“Which one of you is Jennifer Moore?”

Jenny raised a hand, and Phil produced a little card reader.

“Just need a quick swipe, but first…”

Apparently, we had accident insurance built into the fee, which eased my mind a little. I have been on some alleged ‘off-road’ tours that were no more exciting than a walk on a smooth beach, but once, and only once, Amina and I had done the tour offered by a slate quarry up north. Oh dear.

We loaded our kit, and Phil was off and into his spiel.

“We do a bit of driving first. It takes us by coast to north top of island, where is forest and mirador. Er, place to see views. Then we come through middle to place to eat, traditional Canary Island food, and then we have Teide national park, with rocks and local plantings. Miss Moore has said about her own interest, so we finish at a park above the town, where there is easy birds”

I will admit I fell asleep on the first leg, which was basically motorway-style driving, granted along the edge of a sparkling sea and underneath arid mountains, but still boring as all hell. Things changed after about an hour, when the road turned inland and very, very twistily uphill. Our views were blocked by dense scrub or low forest, until we suddenly emerged at a small car park well away from any foliage, and we started to punish our memory cards while Jenny got down to serious business with a telescope. The views were wide, across hillsides and odd little perched villages to mountains and the sea. Just about worth the drive, I thought, and after Jenny had spent rather a while in silence, we were off again, this time staying with the twistiness until it opened out onto brown, dry slopes, and we pulled into what looked like a species of isolated ‘services’. I realised Jenny was clutching a paperback, and to no surprise on my part, it was called something like ‘Where to Watch Birds in the Canaries’.

“Please tell me this isn’t…”

She blushed, just slightly.

“It is. It’s the bushes around the site”

Phil said we had an hour for lunch, and we settled down under the shade of the usual big, square umbrellas for a meal of local dishes, adequately cooked, and no booze. Jenny spent half her time turned away from the rest of us, until she finally sighed.

“Got one, at last! There, on the little wall”

Lil turned to look.

“I can see two birds”

“Well, one’s a canary. It’s the dark blue one I was after. It’s a Canaries chaffinch. I didn’t want to go hone without seeing THE local bird”

I pointed towards the bus park.

“Is that another couple over there?”

Jenny suddenly grinned, her face really lighting up.

“Yeah, it’s always the way. They’re like London buses. Don’t see one for ages, and then there’s a herd. Like wildebeest, galloping majestically cross the veldt”

“We’ve sort of been ignoring you. What else have you seen?”

“Oh, mostly SBJs— small brown jobs--- but local specials. Even the sparrows are different, here. I’m hoping, if we get somewhere greener, to show you a real treat”

“Such as?”

“Save that until we do, okay? Anyway, let’s get this down us and I believe the next bit will be one of the spectaculars”

She was right on that one, for that was when we finally went off-road. I can’t remember the names of the places Phil took us, but they were both bizarre and spectacular. At one particularly chaotic stretch, Amina turned to me and asked, “Am I the only one thinking ‘fur bikini’ here?”

It took a second, then I twigged.

“Shawshank?”

Lil barked out a laugh.

“Well before that, woman! Raquel Welch, One Million Years BC”

Jenny stared at her.

“Now, why might you remember that, hmmm? Would there be a couple of big reasons?”

Lil tried to bluff it out.

“Good actress, fine performance”

Jenny was having none of it.

“Nope. Bikini. Fur. Well-filled. I rest my case”

Phil called over his shoulder.

“Was film here, and on Lanzarote. But we got no dinosaurs anymore. My father, he liked her. Did driving for Hammer”

He pulled up to point out some particularly striking pinnacle, at which point I realised my wife was in the middle of a well-stifled fit of the giggles. I nudged her with an elbow, and she burst out laughing, before declaring that Lil and Jenny were already acting like an old married couple, and then asking where all the romance had gone, Phil, sensible man, simply held his tongue.

Our next stop was in a small village in the most contorted valley I have ever seen, all towering peaks, jagged pinnacles and precipitous drops. I don’t know how high the peaks were, but they were a long way up, and the ground below our car park was a hell of a long way down. It was delightful!

Eventually, though, we ran out of time, and Phil started the drive back, once more on main roads. We were slumped in our seats, drowsing, when I realised we were turning into the entrance of a golf course, of all things, a golf course.

“Is hopefully a favour for Miss Moore, here, si? If I am right…. Yes!”

He parked up well outside any designated parking spaces, while Jenny sighed happily, passing a couple of spare sets of binoculars around.

“There. By the water trap, pond thing. This is my treat to you”

I have never seen an odder bird. First, it was turning round and round in circles, like a broken compass, stopping every so often to push its beak into the ground like a tired sewing machine. That beak was curved. There was a long crest on the thing’s head which it erected a couple of times, to show something like a Native American feather bonnet, and, to cap it all, the bird was powder pink. Eventually, as golfers approached in an electric buggy, it took off, showing black and white wings and a flight more like that of a butterfly than of a bird. Lil grunted.

“What the hell was that?”

“That, my love, was a hoopoe, and I suggest that there are few better ways to end a tour like this on. Thanks, Phil! You were dead right”

“My wife, Miss Moore, she don’t agree. You write letter to say I am allowed to be right?”

He got a bloody good tip instead, which would probably work better for his credibility.

In, changed, and splash into the pool. A jug of the usual fruity stuff for starters, a meal at the hotel, and then a quieter evening at our Brummy friend’s place. The whole thing was turning into a superb holiday. It was most definitely a cut above Barry.

CHAPTER 8
In the way pf all holidays, of course, just as we had not just established a routine, but settled firmly into it, the clock ran out and we had to return to the UK. We saw Jenny and Lil off at the airport as we awaited our own flight, and I pondered the eternal Welsh question of how waterproof skin really was. Amina was quiet, which was always an unusual state for her, so I distracted her by dragging her off to grab something to eat, after the non-competition of choice between the tapas bar and a certain burger chain. Once we were settled on a couple of stools, I asked the usual penny-related question.

“Ah, love, just wondering. Where they’re going, aye?”

“Gatwick, I believe”

“Being serious, I am, but that’s sort of part of what I meant. If they do go for it, who picks up sticks? And then there’s Jenny’s job. Lot of loose ends to tie up. Get to their age, and there’s a lot of accumulated baggage”

“We’re not that much younger than either of them, love”

“Yeah, but I am trusting that you have no plans to move on, and I certainly have none. What is simple is that Jen’s in a, sorry, generic job”

She took a bite of tortilla.

“If I’d spotted that, I’d have made a better joke of it. Anyway, transferrable skills, aye? Doesn’t have to be dildos—er, plastic mouldings. Could be anything”

“What if Lil wants to move the other way?”

“Then a lot easier for both, but, well, Crawley?”

“Crazy name, crazy place. At least it’s not Newport”

“Oh god no. Anyway, what are you actually thinking?”

“Simple, really. Job search, sort of. Got a couple of ideas. Just looking to offer her a couple of choices if she wants to come home”

She paused for another bite of tortilla, then looked directly at me.

“Selfishness, as well, love. Lil, aye? I like her, and Jenny as well, and if they decide to make a go of it in England, we almost certainly lose them both. Much more of a draw to travel to see your partner than it is to see a few friends”

Another bite.

“And yes, I know we were, well, that was ages ago, but I don’t want to lose Lil”

“It’s a bloody good job I know you, love”

“Yeah, well. You wouldn’t have married me if you didn’t”

She suddenly snorted out a laugh.

“Then again, if you REALLY knew me, why did you marry me?”

She flicked a glance over her shoulder, clearly looking to change the subject.

“Got a gate. Let’s boogie”

She slept throughout the flight, or appeared to, while I sat and thought. I really didn’t believe there was anything in her tease about old flames, but there was truth buried there. Lil had been a part of our lives, one way or another, for so many years that it would be a real wrench to watch her leave. On the other hand, I had seen something in her eyes she was clearly trying to conceal, and that was fear. It so obviously wasn’t just her Jenny that was head over heels, and I could almost taste her worry. The big Five-Oh coming up, and that abyss of solitary loneliness yawning ahead of her.

Going back to work was a bit of a shock to my system, but it was enlivened by Tom’s nose, which was bright red and peeling.

“So we had a bit of a heatwave, yeah? Doesn’t always bloody rain here! Anyway, talk me through the hols, yours, that is”

“How were the dogs?”

“Happy as happy things, Jen. I mean, they know the place, know the farm dogs, so it’s all incredible shrinking hounds stuff, as usual”

“Sorry?”

“Floof-monster runs into water, comes out as whippet”

He chuckled with happy memories.

“Then shakes herself dry, all over me and Con, and suddenly we have a Floof back, just a wet one. Anyway, we out on Tuesday? Quiz night again, and we’re earlies onto rest day”

“Let me check with her indoors, okay?”

“Of course I--- go ahead, Central”

He made the usual one-sided comments, then grunted.

“Making for there, Central. Buckle in, Jen”

Full disco, both lights and sound, as we headed out to the M4, as best as I could guess.

“Jen?”

“Go ahead”

“Bloody odd one. Police stop, malicious info. Driver had his wife across the back seat, heading for maternity, hospital, aye? Pretty hard police stop, and she’s gone into labour”

“Arse. Any obvious complications?”

“Other than a delivery on the back seat of a car on a motorway hard shoulder? I think that’s enough for our starter for ten”

“Get us there, mate”

“Doing that, love. ETA is about five minutes”

I pulled the Big Green Bag to me to prioritise some kit just as Tom used the ordinary horn to tell some driver they might reconsider their approach in regard to emergency vehicles with wailing sirens and flashing blue lights. He wasn’t quite muttering, but I could hear.

“Out of the fucking way, you stupid, blind bastard! Right… Jen?”

“Yes?”

“Just coming up. The police have a van there, so hopefully a bit more working room than a car back seat”

“Thanks, mate”

I could read his mind: if mother-to-be was that far gone, she wouldn’t be climbing into our workspace. He braked sharply, and then I was out and fast-walking up to said van, as a couple of coppers murmured comments that all added up to ‘Thank fuck’.

“Hello, love! I’m Jen. I’m a paramedic, and my mate Tom will be with us shortly. What do I call you?”

“I’m… Natalie… and… shit… that’s… my husband… Will… sorry. Breathless”

“Not to worry, Natalie. Just need to do some checks, vital signs, aye? You local?”

“No… Swansea… bitch woman!”

One of the coppers whispered “Malicious complaint”, and I closed that bit of my mind down, because the fucking baby was crowning.

“Tom!”

“Got it here, Jen”

He passed through a mask, clearly rigged for good-old gas-and-air, and after I had attached it to Natalie’s face, I started setting out the kit, including snips and ligature thread. I kept talking to her, the usual meaningless rubbish, as her speech disappeared and breaths shortened, before we ended up in the traditional exhortations to ‘push’, and then things got very busy indeed, once again in that traditional way, until I suddenly had a wriggling bundle in my hands. Clear the mucus plug from the mouth, check the breathing (“WAH!”) and tie off the umbilical, before finally placing a little boy on Natalie’s chest.

“You have a son, love”

Once I had finished the necessary clean-up and bagged the placenta, I left her with her husband, both of them weeping for Wales. As I rose from the van’s bench seat, I checked my watch: where the hell had forty-eight minutes gone? I took a few more to stretch outside the van, keeping close to the barrier as traffic thundered past. Tom brought me his flask, pouring a cuppa.

“Off to St Dai’s?”

“Think so, mate. Looks fine so far, but it’s her first, so best get a proper look-see. Any idea what the ‘malicious‘ crap was about?”

He winced.

“Yes, actually. Seems that Will was heading home, going to their local hospital, aye? Road works, and a queue. Some woman did the usual drive all the way down the closed lane and tried to force her way in, queue jump, aye? He wouldn’t let her”

His mouth twisted.

“So the police get a call about a paedophile with an abducted baby in his car, they do a full-on hard stop on that basis, and some fucking cow gets to smirk”

“Oh for fuck’s sake! They got any leads?”

Tom shrugged.

“None at all. Apart from the front and rear dashcam footage Will has, with her number plates clearly visible, and the recording of her 999 call”

“Oh dear!”

“How sad, never mind? Yup. Shall we crossdeck the patient, and get rolling? Just going to radio a sitrep”

We found out later that the baby was now William Thomas Bryn etc, as calling him Jennifer might have raised a few eyebrows. I managed to handle the disappointment.

Our trip to the quiz night was a Rubicon in itself, for Lil was back from the town named after an infestation of insects, and Alwen was courting. I wasn’t subtle, I will admit, but she was blushing.

“It’s, well, you know I don’t just work here?”

“I know that, yes”

“Well, there’s a pub, it’s close to Nana Deb’s. Been working there for… It’s where I met the girls who knew Marlene”

I paused, trying to find the right words, but they weren’t there. Try a simpler approach.

“What happened, love?”

She checked up and down the bar for customers, as Tom waved at me to rejoin the quiz team, but I was doing my own triage. She spent some time polishing a glass, then looked up at me.

“I went home, for the first time in ages, and, well, wasn’t good”

“You went home as what they wanted, or as yourself?”

She drew in a few long, slow breaths, then looked back at me.

“I thought ‘fuck it’ and went as myself”

“And?”

“I didn’t end up staying long. Came straight back, thought I’d, you know, clear my head by going back to work. Harry—-the other landlord?---he had some slots available. There’s… The pub’s just up the road from Nana Deb’s place, like I said, it’s where I met her girls… and they had some lads with them, from college, and, well…”

She straightened up behind the bar, making another check for customers and seeing Ox moving in.

“Cleared my head, Jen. I mean, I always knew I was a girl, but… Now I know I’m a straight one”

Another quirk of her mouth.

“Maria’s a bit pissed off”

CHAPTER 9
I could see exactly what she meant, for it had made up so much of her debate with Maria: if things went wrong, each could lose a friend. I had never seen anything really nasty in Maria, apart from a certain blinkered aspect when she saw something she wanted. Like Alwen.

“Got to go, love, for the quiz. Chat after?”

“Please. It’s, well, I know you see things clearly. Might help me do so”

“Later, then. Promise”

I took my drinks back to our table, as Marlene made yet another astonishingly filthy joke out of a perfectly innocuous quiz question, something about Hungary, gussets and the word ‘moist’. Tom welcomed me back, taking a quick look over his shoulder at no less than three tables of Bakers and the duo of Pobol.

“Did you catch that, Jen? ‘Biggest spot of moistness in Hungary’? What’s that mean?”

Connie suddenly started laughing.

“Just got it. Lake Balaton!”

Tom was scribbling, as she spelled out the word, then chuckling as she got the other joke.

“Wakey wakey, hands on snakey. That lake is full of snakes, swimming ones”

Amina and I looked at each other, but Con was shaking her head.

“No, girls. Grass snakes. Harmless”

My wife shuddered.

“I’ll take your word for it, but no. Just no. I’ll stick to warm seas and nice beaches, thank you very much. What’s up with Alwen, Jen?”

“Stuff, love. She’ll tell us what she feels she can, but I suspect we need a careful-treading approach. Going to join us when she finishes, she says. Oh: that one’s Albany”

We came fifth in the end, behind Pobol and all three sets of bakers, so we were without winnings, but Scott and Omar, as ever, brought their third place spoils to our table to share. We topped them up as appropriate, and then Lil was pushing the younger woman out from behind the bar as she started the last-orders ritual. Marlene sitting down with the Prossers.

Alwen pulled up a spare chair, setting down a pinky-peach coloured long drink while waving away Omar’s offer of some Italian fizz.

“Riding home tonight, thanks. Need as clear a head as I can manage. Jen?”

“Haven’t said anything, girl. That’s your call”

“Yeah. Thanks. Got to… Start from scratch. You all know I have family in Swansea, right?”

A round of nods from us all, and she winced.

“You also know I don’t go home, and why. My parents keep pushing for it, though, and well, family? Well, I had a weekend free for once, deliberately. I caved in, thought, well, how bad could it be? So I went”

She waved a hand down her front.

“Ever since that day, with Marlene, yeah? Little black dress and New Year’s Eve? This has been me ever since. Got used to being this way, same in college. Got so many friends there, though, it’s not exactly typical”

Connie put a hand on the girl’s.

“You pass, though, love. Nobody would know unless, well, they knew, aye?”

Alwen nodded,

“Yeah, yeah. I’m lucky that way, unlike a lot of girls. Not the point, really. I mean, my family know, but I sort of hadn’t realised how little they really knew. I mean, I didn’t wear a dress”

Omar shuffled round to hug her.

“I’m hearing all sorts there, love. What did you put on?”

“Oh, just a T-shirt, fleece, pair of slacks”

She waved at her chest.

“Trouble is, well, HRT is working”

There was an almost unanimous “Ah!” from around the table, and she continued, holding up her other hand.

“Girly watch, pink trainers, and my comfiest bra. Mum got very pushy. Dad got shouty. I had an open return on the train, so I just walked out before he got past shouty to punchy. Got back over here, weekend is a complete wash-out. Gave Harry a shout, and he had the Saturday and Sunday available at the Clifton, so I thought, well… Better than sitting in my room and getting pissed, as well as cheaper”

She took a long sip from her pink/peach thing, then waved it at us.

“Lemon, lime and bitters. Picked it up from Ish and his family. Technically it’s alcoholic, but it’s just about zero. And yes, I’m doing the hesitation, delay thing”

A long, deep breath.

“Alicia and some of the other girls were in, including that joined-at-the-hip pair, Rachel and Emma. They’re odd; don’t think they’re gay, but they seem to work as a couple. Anyway, ‘Licia had some lad called Clive in tow, and he had a couple of friends. This was the Saturday night, yeah? And the friends, there were four of them, they were obviously looking to pull, but there’s Rachel and Emma, completely inwards sort of thing, but one of the lads, he’s staying back, just watching, and it turns out he’s called Matthew. He’s polite, not pushy, has a bit of chat over the bar, but that’s it, till they all clear off to the Happy Wok”

Amina couldn’t keep quiet, of course.

“And? There’s more, we can tell”

Alwen just nodded slowly, then shook her head.

“Yes, there’s more and no, I don’t know what I’m doing, and, well, get this bit out of the way first. I came back in for the Sunday shift, and there were ‘Licia and Clive again, just having a quiet sit and natter. I think it’s the House rules, you know? Somewhere nearby that doesn’t close as early as Kim’s place, where they can do the ordinary boy-girl stuff”

Amina waved her on, as impatient as ever.

“Yeah, they had Matthew along with them, so he’s the gooseberry. Just him, yeah? Not the others. And gooseberry is as gooseberry does, or is that the other way round? Anyway, he ends up sitting at the bar, and the place is quiet, Sunday evening trade, so we talk. And he asks me out. So… I do the full disclosure thing, hi, I’m the freak, you know the score, and he just shrugged. ‘Clive’s happy’, he says, ‘so are Seb and Jake’. And… This is the thing, yeah? I had just had all that shit from my own sodding family, and I wasn’t even in a bloody skirt, just for them, and here was a lad being so polite, and I said ‘Yeah, okay’, and was it just because of how Mam and Dad were?”

Connie reached across to hold a finger to my wife’s lips, still holding Alwen’s hand.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

More nodding from the girl.

“Yeah, there is, and it’s something I’ve read a lot. Stories, autobiographies, yeah? I met up with him on the Monday evening, and we went to that Indian street food place off St Mary’s, then got the bus down to the Waterfront. No booze, none at all.no groping, no snogging, no pushiness, just a hug and a peck on the cheek and goodnight. There’s me assuming it was just a box-tick, and then he rang me the following evening. Folk club on the Thursday night: did I want to go? Yeah, I say, okay, but then, well, we sort of agree to a lunchtime coffee before my shift here on the Tuesday, and I’m realising he’s not just ticked the ‘have a date with a tranny’ box, so we have a toasty and an Americano at Costa’s, and I can’t remember who said what, but he laughed at something, then just grinned at me, and it was, shit: he’s actually not bad-looking, and that’s, you know… So I go to work, after another cheek-peck, and all I can think about is his grin, and that thing I’ve read”

Connie was still solicitous, and I blessed my wife’s restraint in holding back her own questions as Tom’s wife asked, “Which is?”

“Oh, nothing amazing, just, well, there are so many people like me that talk about wasted years, and that’s me. Stuck in a rut until Marlene and the rest lifted me out of it. And then there’s when I watch women. Easy to get things mixed up. Maria, well, she talks about watching girls and fancying them, and at the same time envying them, and I thought, all that baggage from my parents, was I over-rationalising things?”

Another hug from Omar, who asked, “So that Thursday was a goer?”

“It was a no-brainer, love. I needed to know who I was. Matt had his Mam’s car for the evening, so he picked me up, and, well, I thought ‘folk club’, so I did the flouncy skirt and gypsy blouse thing, and he only looked down my top five or six times that I caught, and the club was all in Welsh, which suited me. The Prossers were there as well, so I got a sideways look from Nana Deb, but no problems. So we sat down. And his arm ended up across my shoulders and… my hand ended up on his knee, and that was it, till the end, and Frank asks if we want to come down to a chip shop they like”

She took another, longer pull from her drink, and I noticed the tremor in her hand.

“So we had chips and stuff, and ate them standing out by the Taff, and Debbie and frank are no sooner finished than they are into a simple snog and cuddle, and I gathered that place means something to them, so I look up at Matt, and, well, it worked for me, and I think it worked for him. And we’re both back in college the next week, so, well, there’s more PDA stuff, and I know Maria’s not happy, but there’s still that question: am I doing this just to spite my parents?”

A quiet word from behind me.

“Can we have a word, Alwen?”

Debbie, with her husband. Omar waved at the bottles.

“None left, Deb”

“Ah, you can have ours. Baking in the morning, ah? Now, girl, you seem to have shared it all with these folk; mind if we add a bit more?”

Alwen was a little hesitant.

“Go ahead”

“Right. Alicia has been on your case, and so has Seb. Very switched on, that lad. And I have had words with Maria”

“Oh, please don’t!”

“Done. She just needed a reminder of personal boundaries, and given her history, well, it sort of struck home. Why do you think we took you for those chips?”

“Ah. Scoping out?”

“Absolutely. I was watching his eyes, where he was looking”

“Down my top, a lot of the time”

“Aye, I’ll give you that, but that’s men. He wasn’t like the coppers, checking everyone else out, he was just watching you, or the musicians, and… Frank understands. I had… I knew a man a lot of years ago, long gone now, and…”

Her husband cuddled into her, kissing her cheek.

“Deb talks of how all she could se of him were his eyes, on hers, and we did a little memorial thing to him and other friends---“

Debbie interrupted.

“Not so little”

“Call it select, then. No jokes, but size isn’t everything. We had enough of the right people there to make it all we needed. Anyway, if he’s watching your eyes, even with the occasional look downwards, that’s a good sign. And our spies tell us he’s a sound lad”

Debbie settled back into her husband’s arms.

“And you don’t get to waste as many bloody decades as I did”

CHAPTER 10
Amina was pensive in bed that night.

“I can just about remember, my love. Being that young---well, younger. Being confused. Not exactly the done thing in our family, comfortable shoes. Must be so much harder when you’re in her situation. I think it’s actually harder for boys, and that’s what her family are still seeing”

I settled myself closer to her.

“Aye, but once you see her. It’s like that Maria was saying: she’s THERE, Three-D, full colour”

“Yes, but the old saying, none so blind? Seen so many girls, and boys, end up losing their family just because they fancy someone a bit, well, more like them”

“You didn’t”

“I bloody well did, love. Early years, anyway. You weren’t there. I couldn’t do anything, I thought, so just did the casual bit. You know: give Mum a call now and again, keep it upbeat. Took a while, but she came round. Eventually. And you know I have cousins that won’t acknowledge me. Lil, well… Lil is just an out-and-out butch, like you. I suspect that Mum would find it harder to take if I was with a girly girl”

“You don’t see me as girly, then?”

“I know you, love, so I know you’re all that, but perceptions important. Alwen’s parents were probably in Uncanny Valley, wanting to see a lad but getting an eyeful of tit, sort of, and no, I haven’t been the one looking down her top. Got my extra pair here…”

She gave me a squeeze, which derailed the conversation for a while. Later, she was still thinking.

“You had a couple of bad ones before our break, didn’t you?”

I settled her head on my shoulder after a sigh.

“Aye, we did. It’s… There are bad ones, and there are really bad ones, and I don’t mean the gory stuff but when, it’s…”

I paused and took a couple of deeper breaths.

“It’s the ones where you get to meet them before you lose them. Not simply another dead body you’re recovering, and I’m not saying that’s pleasant, but a person, one you’ve been talking to”

“You had a better week after, though”

That brought a chuckle.

“Yup! New little man on the block. Reminds me: I need to check court dates, find out when that driver is up. Take popcorn”

“Driver?”

“Oh! Little story, aye? Just between us, but there were some roadworks before where we delivered the baby, and…”

The new run of shifts was rather banal, thankfully, with nothing more serious than a possible case of whiplash in the case of a What’s App Gap driver rear-ended by a slightly fuddled afficionado of wacky baccy, as Tom put it. Far more of a police matter, of course, and our old friends Barry and Bryn were all over both cars like a rash in stab vests and Hi-Viz. Mr Whippy had roadside recovery, and Mr Wacky’s car was seized for a collection of police-related reasons, so our job was limited to fitting a neck brace and delivering the warm and talkative body to St Dai’s.

When I say ‘talkative’, I mean that he was still texting prolifically while in the back of our vehicle. Even with the notice Barry had served on him warning of six points and a two hundred quid fine. Not our worry, but given his age, I suspect his licence was young enough for those six points being enough to see it revoked. My sympathy tank in such cases is always empty, so oh dear, how sad, never mind.

I suppose the most serious case, or rather potentially so, was at about eleven one evening, at the Chippy Lane/St Mary’s junction, where a seriously refreshed Spoons regular was so engrossed in his plastic tray of doner kebab that he clearly had no spare brain function left for things like checking for traffic, and had hailed a taxi in an unconventional and unrecommended way.

I suspected he may have sustained lower limb fractures (shit; I’m thinking like a bloody official incident report) so Tom and I secured both legs before sliding the board underneath him and getting two coppers and a couple of Bouncers to lift him up and onto the trolley, which was when the bastard puked on himself. He gave us three more but smaller loads on the way to St Dai’s, but I had a bowl ready by then. It’s still a smell that gets to me, though.

Just another wonderful evening in the cultural heart of our ancient nation’s vibrant capital city, or some such.

Tom was laughing as we drove back out in lurk mode, after we had wiped down the inside of our wagon to get rid of a few traces of vomit.

“What’s funny, you?”

“Ah, Jen: just thinking how lucky you were he got that bouncer with the puke and not you, and then I remembered that New Year’s Eve”

“That girl in the stupid shoes and about three hankies worth of clothing?”

Yup. The one who’d also eaten a doner in both directions. At least your man didn’t stick his tongue down your throat”

“ICK! ICKY ICKY ICK ICK!”

“Yup. It was that”

The joys of our job, I thought, then remembered William and Natalie, and life felt so much better.

Amina and I were back in the Smugglers a couple of days later, but not on a quiz night. We’d followed Alwen’s lead on that street food place, so the pub was just a sit-and-relax session as our meal settled with the added bonus of nobody pointing and muttering at my beard shadow. We went to the Powell Bar, of course, as it was usually the quietest spot in the place. Lil was working that night, Ox for back-up, as Marlene was off in the disco room using her tongue to flense customers. As I ordered my drinks, Lil nodded towards the far corner.

Alwen, the Alicia girl and two young men. They were all squeezed onto one bench as Alicia did things to a laptop. The conversation was animated, one lad’s arm around her waist while the other sort of supported himself with a hand on Alwen’s shoulder. She, in turn, seemed to be supporting herself with a hand on his knee, so fair’s fair.

I looked back at Lil.

“Clive and Matthew, love?”

“I believe so. Been here about three hours, looking at photos, I believe. Not really drinking”

She shrugged.

“You know Marlene understands, aye? Safe space for us, them, as long as nobody takes the piss. They’re eating us out of crisps, though. And that Grant’s been in tonight, sends his regards”

“Gay trans man?”

“Yup. Looking happier these days, so decent news”

“Heard from your Jen?”

Lil set down the glass she’d been polishing, looked across to my wife, then back at me.

“Amina’s stirring the pot, Jen”

“Ah. She told you about the job search, then?”

“No. My Jen told me; Amina’s been discussing it with her. Now, I know we were, well, but that was years ago. She doesn’t have a claim on me now”

I shook my head.

“Not that, Lil. We discussed it, aye? Both of us… Start again. You and your woman are bloody well-suited, and it would be a shame for you to not have all the chances you can get. It’s just, well, neither of us wants to lose you, and her skills are transferrable”

“So are mine!”

“Aye, but then you’d be living in bloody Crawley, and we’d probably never see you again. And there’s another reason”

“Which is?”

“Your Jen never talk about coming home?”

“Ah. There is that”

“Talk to her, love. Make it a joint decision, a real one. Distance can be a real passion killer. Anyway, I think I should have a closer look at this Matt”

I swiped my card, then delivered the drinks to our table.

“Jen’s being open and honest with Lil, woman. No more sneaking, okay?”

She shrugged, utterly unrepentant.

“Don’t need to sneak no more, then. You sort it with Lil?”

“Think so, but we’ll have to wait and see. Now, that Matt is over there with Alwen, so I am going to see if they want to join us, if you get my point”

“I do. I’ll shuffle some chairs”

“Got your tablet in your bag?”

“Yeah---why?”

“I think they’re looking at holiday snaps, so it gives me an excuse”

“Ah! Got you”

She busied herself with her little slab as I strolled over to the other table, giving a little finger wave as I approached.

“Hiya, Alwen, Alicia, and whoever you two are. Sharing photos?”

Alicia nodded, smiling happily.

“Yup! We usually go off to the mountains with Nana, so we’ve got a load of photos, and some of Clara’s in-laws”

She chuckled.

“Well, not exactly in-laws yet, but you know what I mean. Anyway, this is Clive, and Matt, and this lady is Jen, one of our paramedics”

Clive’s jaw dropped.

“Jen? Work with a Tom?”

“Yes. How do you know?”

He was shaking his head, a huge grin in place.

“Small bloody world! I mean, look---”

I held up a hand.

“This sounds like it’s a bit of a story. My wife and I are looking through our own holiday snaps; why don’t you join us, and we can share?”

They gathered up their jackets and bags, Alicia unplugged her laptop, and we settled once more around the longer table Amina had found. I made the introductions, then held up a hand.

“Let’s get Clive’s story out of the way first. You were saying?”

He laughed once more.

“Look, I know these others through Uni. Where ‘Licia and I met, and her Nana has already done the full Stasi job on me, so Yes, I know about her, so, well I can see you’re the same, Jen”

“Er, no. I have what is called polycystic ovary syndrome. Does hormone stuff”

Amina interrupted, as usual.

“And she’s gay, so she’s very different to your girl, who we assume isn’t”

Then she brayed with laughter, before adding an anecdote about Scott and Omar, one of them saying to some newcomer that if the other wasn’t gay, he was a bloody good actor.

“Anyway, anyway! Jen says you have s tory, Clive, so I’ll shut it for a bit. Go on”

The young man grinned at Alicia, then winced at me.

“Sorry, but, well, hear me out. I’m from Swansea, so I’m in halls over here for Uni. Had a visit from my brother last week. With my sister-in-law. Who is called Natalie”

I couldn’t help the “Shit!” that burst out, and he nodded happily.

“Yes. I’m an uncle now, largely thanks to you and Tom. It’s just that Natalie said the medic had been a trans woman, and, well, sorry. If you want, I’ll let her know. ‘Licia?”

“Yes?”

“Where were we? Hint: I think we’ve seen enough of your perving slab, Matt and me”

“Okay, then. These are from the folk club we go to. This is Clara’s Ish and his Dad”

I recognised the pair, and then it was Matt’s turn to laugh.

“Oh dear, I shall have to let Tod know he’s out of luck in so many ways!”

The lad grinned at the rest of us.

“Got the hots for Clara, he has, and when I tell him exactly how big he is, oh dear once more. How tall’s he, ‘Licia?”

“Um, about six foot three or four, I would guess. Hang on…”

She scrolled through what were clearly her ‘Perving Slab’ shots before coming up with a picture of a family group. A gorgeous oriental woman was standing by a little girl wearing a sort of rucksack with a toy bear in it, while the older man from the previous picture held the rope as the younger man did something energetic on a rock face. He was in a ‘muscle’ vest, and said muscles had corners on them, and those corners had more corners. It was like a picture from one of my anatomy textbooks.

Amina pointed at the screen.

“Is her teddy wearing a crash hat?”

Alicia nodded, waving at my wife’s tablet.

“Yes. Carolyn climbs almost as well as her brother, and the bear goes with her. They’re a very together family”

I glanced at Alwen, and she was not looking happy. Matt saw it, and slipped an arm round her waist, drawing her to him for a kiss to her cheeks.

“There’s years ahead, girl. They’ll come round”

She turned her head to kiss him gently on the lips.

“They’ve had years, Matty”

“You never know”

“Ah, well, I’ll wait for the pigs to take off. Amina?”

“Yes?”

“Got any embarrassing ones of Lil? Or incriminating; doesn’t matter which”

CHAPTER 11
“Ah!”, my wife said, grinning, “How about this one?”

It wasn’t what I expected, which would have been a swimming costume shot, but rather one from one of our restaurants, with Lil pulling a face at some crustacean or cephalopodian thing.

“We experimented with the food, girls. And boys. Why go all the way down there to revisit Chippy Lane?”

Matt was nodding.

“I know what you mean. We went to that street food, Indian, place last week. Good food”

‘We’. He was steadily ticking my own ‘sound lad’ boxes. I offered my own snippet.

“Alwen told us about that, and we thought we’d have a look, or rather a taste. Good spot, lad!”

He looked slightly awkward, glancing at Amina, and I had a rush of understanding.

“Yeah, the wife’s mother sends us regular food parcels, as if she doesn’t trust her daughter’s cooking”

Amina was straight in, of course.

“I can do my own cooking, but you two, the lads, aye? You won’t understand. Sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the work, and Matt: before you say I let my Mum do the cooking, that’s still in the family, aye? Anyway, we are here to share blackmail material, and so…”

I was astonished at the next one, which showed the Spanish police dealing with Chelsea, George and Lions, which was when I understood Amina’s strategy.

“We had had a lovely meal, and ended up in a waterfront bar, for drinkies and more tapas. Bloody coincidence, but it turned out our restaurant and the bar were both owned by the same couple. He was a Brummy… Here. They even had a Welsh flag for us. Then these three English bastards turned up, and Lil’s girlfriend slipped away, so while they were being all transphobic towards my wife, even though, aye? And fucking, sorry, racist towards me, Lil’s girl was calling the cavalry, and here… There was, to my immense satisfaction, a wonderful disregard for such concepts as ‘reasonable force’. They went down hard and stayed there. I only have one regret”

Matt was still fixed on her.

“Which was?”

“We didn’t have any popcorn, of course”

After the laughter died down, Amina moved our photos on to some shots of the lunar landscapes we had visited, Alicia replied with pics of that narrow bloody ridge on Snowdon, with a little girl and bear literally in mid-air as she was clearly skipping along scenery that had my guts clenching. Ye fucking gods!

We came to the end of our photo session, as the clock wound down, and I left our details with Clive to pass on to his brother.

“Yeah, Jen, they’ll be over the moon. There’s… Look, we’re having the christening next weekend. Are you free? I mean, I’m not my brother, but I really think he’d like you there, if you can make it. I can ask, yeah?”

“Both Tom… We’re a bit like a married couple, aye?”

Amina mumbled, “Just you’ve never been on solids, have you?”, and I shushed her.

“Clive, Tom and me, well, it’s part of the job that we have some pretty shitty times. Your Natalie, that was a real boost to us”

“Well, that bitch of a driver is up before the magistrates the day before. Fast track, aye? Apparently she had a moment of revelation and repentance once she’d been shown the dashcam footage and been played the 999 recording. Oopsies, et cetera”

I chuckled. “The traffic lads who pulled your bro, Barry and Bryn, were not happy bunnies that day. You okay if I let them know?”

Clive grinned.

“Yes please, Jen”

Lil settled into a spare seat.

“Enough’s enough; Ox is closing the tills down. What’s the game?”

Amina huffed.

“Showing this lot the blackmail footage”

“Oh. Bloody good job my reputation is already too debauched to be damaged. You in tomorrow, Alwen?”

The girl twitched, sitting a little further away from Matt.

“Er, yeah. Got a tutorial and an assignment, so only from seven o’clock”

“You in as well, Matthew?”

The boy looked round the group, then spoke to Amina.

“You’re all checking me out, aren’t you?”

To my astonishment, it was Alicia who answered.

“Yes, Matt, they are. I’m… Look. You know what sort of place I live in, and we’re there because it wasn’t safe anywhere else. I lost…”

She shuddered, and looked across to Lil.

“Any chance of something, you know, stronger?”

The woman nodded.

“Marlene will understand”

She was back in thirty seconds with an open bottle of prosecco and some glasses. She poured for Alicia, then looked at me and my wife, getting a head shake in return. Alicia took a swig of the fizzy wine before looking hard at Matt.

“Things you might have missed, Matt. It’s… we get a lot of shit, me, Alwen, girls like us. I suppose this is for you as well, Clive. My Dad is a diamond, but it took a long while to bring him round, and part of that, a huge part, was Nana Deb’s doing. What do you think of him?”

The lad looked flustered.

“He’s, dunno. A mate, now?”

“Yes. And I can tell you the exact moment Dad started seeing me as me, and not him, but he had… had a hiccup about my, well, sexuality. Me being a girl, he coped with, eventually. Me being a straight one, well…”

“But he’s sound now?”

“He is. I remember our first Christmas, the first one as myself, that is, and it was wonderful. Could you top up my glass, please?”

She almost drained the glass.

“I wasn’t the only one. I had a friend in the House, a girl called Serena, and her mother… We each went home for Christmas, me with Dad to my grandparents, and, shit, it was more than I had ever dreamt of. Serena went home to her mother’s. I got a text from her, and she was so, so happy”

She reached for the bottle herself, topped up her glass and drained it in one.

“Sorry if any of you wanted some of this… Serena had the best mother and daughter day any of us could have dreamt of, and cuddled up with her Mam for the night, and her father came home, piled up all sorts of shit at both front and back doors, and set it alight, and that is why people like Nana Deb and Jen here, and Lil, watch our backs. So, well, I know my man here, cause I’ve, we’ve talked it through. Not putting you down, Matt, but, well, we… No. I’m happy you’re sound”

The lad looked stunned.

“Thank you, I suppose”

Alicia’s smile was a tight one.

“Oh, absolutely. If we’d been unhappy, sorry, Clive, love, but despite you vouching for him, if we’d been unhappy, he’d have been told to piss off. Bollocks: was that the whole bottle?”

I looked hard at Alicia.

“Both of them?”

She simply nodded, before adding, “Enough, okay?”

Clive hugged her, then kissed her cheek again before looking at me in the most direct of ways.

“I’m local, Jen, not like this one from down West. I was at the same school as ‘Licia. It’s okay love; I’ve got you. What it is, we had a group, girls together, yeah? And there were a few digs, a few too many jokes, and then we had a funeral. That was sort of a key thing: suddenly, more people were seeing who the girls from the House were, and I know what you’re going to say, ‘Licia, those cakes from your friend helped, but it was that funeral that opened eyes. Opened mine, aye? I sort of looked back on the jokes I’d told, just like the other lads, and then we’re at Uni, and, well, decided to make amends, sort of, and the amends ended up, well. Ended up going further than I expected”

He laughed out loud, all of a sudden.

“And this one here, yeah? His bloody music!”

I nodded, a little confused.

“Folk music?”

Clive grinned again, and nodded.

“Haven’t told ‘Licia this, so it’s good blackmail stuff, or rather was, once I tell it. Matt’s in hall, so his room is handy for a bit of post-pub stuff. Can’t remember why ‘Licia wasn’t out, but me and him were, and it was one of those student things: I’ve got a sleeping bag for his floor, we tank up at the Student Union, and then it’s the Chinese and a bag full of ‘extra portions’. Couple of spare camping bowls, and divvy the portions up, fifty-fifty, while pissing off his neighbours with some sounds”

I was chuckling happily at my own memories of doing exactly that in my student days, and he noticed, giving me a tip of an imaginary hat.

“Yeah, yeah, and doing the put-the-political-world-to-rights student thing, I know. Anyway, he’s already asked me a few personal questions about ‘Licia, so I sort of explain, carefully, and he says, ‘reminds me of a song’ and digs out a CD”

Alicia finished another glass in time to ask, “Which song?”

Matt was now pink, and I wondered where this was going. Clive simply said, “You know the album, love. ‘Bright Lights Tonight’, yeah?”

His girl sprayed a bit of wine.

“You cheeky sod, Matt! That’s one of our favourites in the House, and I bet I can guess which song it was!”

Matt was looking down, but Alicia had no mercy, and started to sing, a little out of tune.

“Your boyfriend’s good looking, he’s got it all there
Looks like God made him with something to spare
You look good together, scurrying off down the street
Has he got a friend, has he got a friend for me?”

She wiped her nose, then laughed again.

“Just, we will assume that your own question was regendered”

I reached across to take Matt’s hand.

“Sorry, Matt. Alicia, Clive, a little too far, I think”

She looked a little abashed, sneaking a sideways glance at Alwen, who had simply sat in silence throughout, but then reached for Matt’s free hand.

“Jen’s right; Clive shouldn’t have told us all that stuff, but, well, makes sense”

He looked at her in silence for more than a few seconds, then asked, “Is it a problem, you know, that I asked him before I really knew you?”

“It does explain one thing, Matt, and that’s why I suddenly had an introduction to you from half my housemates”

“And is that a problem?”

“Honestly? Look, I’m a drifter, at least in my personal life. If I hadn’t met ‘Licia and the other girls, I doubt I’d be here---no, not like that! I mean, I’d probably still be sitting on that fence, too frightened to come down on the right side of it. You gave me a bit of a push. I’m pretty certain it was the right way. Just don’t expect to be mates with my own Dad”

She looked sharply at her girlfriend, who had blanched as she spoke.

“Sorry it came out like that”

“It’s okay, Alwen. We’ve just had a bit of a remembrance fest recently. I’d show you the pics, but they’re private, private to Nana Deb, yeah? I just heard the words, and it was, you know. Whatever: we’re sorry if we were matchmaking, but if it’s worked out, then, doesn’t matter, does it?”

Alwen frowned.

“It still matters, though. Matt?”

“Yes?”

“Has it worked out for you?”

He was obviously wondering if the question was a loaded one, so I squeezed his hand.

“Go on, lad”

He coughed once, then simply replied, “Yes, I think so”, and Alwen smiled, raised their joined hands and kissed his.

“Then that’s sorted. Only one thing left now, apart from the decent snog you will give me in a few: what penance shall we devise for these two?”

CHAPTER 12
That really sealed the evening for us, but it left Amina silent in the cab home, which was unusual for her. She did the usual pottering about once we were home, putting away a few bits of crockery, then just led the way upstairs. It wasn’t until we were both settled under the duvet that she started to talk once more.

“I am so, so glad I’m not like those girls, love”

“What’s brought this on?”

“Oh, just realising how simple it is being gay. I mean, it’s not simple, but you know what I mean. Not like having to work out who you are AND who you fancy”

“Alwen?”

“All of them, love. Not just the girls, is it? Look at what happened to that young lad, Grant?”

“I remember. I still don’t know if they found the man who hurt him, you know?”

I snuggled down and pulled her into a closer cuddle.

“I know he reported it, cause I know most of the coppers that were there, but I was talking to Graham for a bit”

“Tenerife Graham?”

“Yes. The way you lot got through the sangria, I felt like a one-woman bucket chain. Anyway, he was talking about how things were, back where he comes from. He’s known Debbie Prosser for a very long time, you know”

“I got that impression”

“Yeah. That remembrance thing Alicia was talking about, well, I think it had something to do with her parents. They, Debbie and her parents, used to stay with Graham for a while each Summer, up in Northumberland—by that beach he mentioned?”

“Got you”

“Well, that was the thing. Debbie moved to Cardiff, the boys came down to visit, and they couldn’t get enough of The Smugglers”

“Safe space?”

“Safe space. Rural Northumberland, not so much. Even in the city, Newcastle, it was risky. I got the impression that if you did get grief, you didn’t go to the police”

“You’re saying… reporting it would make it worse?”

“Indeed. I mean, there were coppers in that gang that was targeting twinks. So a lot of it never got reported”

“I’ve sort of guessed that, but it’s different for blokes. I don’t think nastier, just more overtly bloody violent. Then again, that man that hurt Grant, what exactly did he think he was punching?”

She wriggled a bit before continuing.

“That came out wrong; didn’t mean to say the lad’s a ‘thing’. Just, well, lad comes on to another lad, he risks a kicking. Girl comes on to the wrong girl, she usually gets hurty words. Not always, of course; there’s enough vicious cows out there, like that one that killed the man up by the castle. Anyway, what I’m getting at is, Alicia, the others, they first have to get people to accept them as who they are, and THEN that bloody minefield. Alwen, trying to work out which way she swings---”

“I don’t think Maria was helping matters”

“Really, love? I suspect she was. Alwen said it, about drifting. Too easy to do that; one of my worst nightmares, back when Lil and me split: is this it? Do I end up old and alone?”

“So you only married me for senior care duties?”

“Being serious, love. Heard it called ‘druthers’. Too easy to end up with a life of missed opportunities, regrets, aye? Thank god someone did a little matchmaking, is what I say”

“And if it all goes tits up? Matt and her?”

“Then she has a clearer idea of who she is, and more to the point, so do other people around her. It’s… I’m thinking of Gemma Cakes, aye? Frank says she gets much less grief than she used to, especially since she got wed”

Another squeeze, and she continued in a softer voice.

“That’s sort of what I was saying about the violence, love. Not just her at risk now; wrong arsehole reads her, and it’s Matt who risks a kicking, for being a bumboy, puff, the rest of that shit”

She sighed, long and deep, and her free hand cupped my breast.

“Safe here, in so many ways. I know who I am, I know who you are I know there’s a whole group of friends at Uni watching each other’s backs, but I still worry it’ll be a bumpy ride for Matt. Just need to do a bit of your job; be ready to pick up the pieces”

I couldn’t argue with any of that, but she still seemed far more on edge than could be explained by third party worries, so I pressed the point.

“What’s got you so wound up, love? I know you”

“You should do; you married me”

“Yup. So what’s been jerking your chain?”

She lay silent for a while, then sighed.

“It’s Mam”

“YOUR Mam? What way?”

“Ah, love, not her, not really. She’s just been catching shit. Family back in Pakistan, aye?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Not shit like that Rhodes family?”

“Oddly, no. It’s her. Dad and his… Dad and his cousin are very happy up in Brum. It’s her family, and her. They gave up on me years ago, so they’re lining up old men for her. Something about a land dispute over there. I get lost in all that shit, but the great great aunties and uncles are pushing hard”

“Like when they tried to get you to go over there?”

“Tried and failed, like I tried and bloody succeeded in telling them to fuck off. Don’t care how many shops or fields fifteenth cousin fucking Abdul or whatever might own, I do NOT do blokes”

I chuckled.

“I had sort of worked that one out, love”

“Yeah, and so did Mam, eventually. Took a while, but we got there”

She looked up.

“Took a bloody long while, though. Wasn’t till I got her thinking it was her own idea. Anyway, it’s Mam that’s the target. Village politics, really. Don’t really think they’re bothered if she goes over there or not, as long as they get her name on the necessary bits of paper. Not worried about me; I’m the non-person pervert”

“How’s your Mam taking it?”

“Oh, wobbly, isn’t it? She’s happy as she is, but she’s got no angels, just a demon on each shoulder, one talking about family duty, the other whining on about women without men being failures. I mean, she’s got us, so she’s never going to be alone, but the bloody Patriarchy has its claws deep in her. What purpose does she have without a man’s meals to make and his arse to wipe?”

That last snipe broke the mood, as it set us both laughing, but she sobered quickly.

“What do we do, love? Find her some random bloke we trust?”

Amina was laughing as she said it, but then added, “To be honest, I don’t think Mam’s that into men anymore, after my father, but she still has that little ‘doing the right thing’ stick up her arse. I suppose we just need to keep on keeping on, love. Just, well, I think we need to let her see she’s not on her own, not really”

“What? Night out at the Smugglers?”

“Seriously? I had thought of that, on a quiz night”

“You’re perverse, woman!”

“But you like me that way”

“True”

“Serious head on again, I think, well, as long as we steer her away from the disco room, she’d see it as a giggle. Naughty but nice, aye? And can you think of anyone less threatening than the bears?”

She suddenly barked out a laugh.

“Don’t tell her you know this, but you remember that Christmas we had over there, couple of years ago? I mean, I know it wasn’t strictly Christmas, but we took a case of prosecco?”

“I remember”

“Well, there were a couple of bottles left”

“I know. I picked them up a fortnight later”

“Did you look at them?”

“Why?”

“Well, I did, when we had Tom and Connie over. I’d got a deal on Sainsbury’s own brand”

“And?”

“The bottles you brought back were Tesco’s”

“The cheeky woman!”

“Sneaky, cheeky, little old wine drinker her. I don’t think she’ll get along with pork, though, or whelks”

“I don’t get along with whelks, love”

“Yeah, but you warm my cockles”

I so love my wife.

Tom and I were back on glorified taxi runs for a while, thank god, which left me with fewer bruises as there was no real need to play Super Whatever Cart with our van, and Amina started dropping hints with her mother.

To my astonishment, it worked. Three of us turned up at the pub, Hira’s eyes everywhere as we entered to a set of bows and cap raising from our smoky bears.

“Do they not get too hot wearing all that leather, Ami?”

“I have no idea, Mam. We’re not exactly each other’s types, are we? Now, this is our bar”

“Elaine Powell? The one who stopped those men?”

I laughed, as we paused outside the door.

“Knowing Elaine, I suspect she’s stopped a lot of men”

“No. That gang of thugs. Hurt all those young men. She was the one, wasn’t she?”

Amina nodded.

“The same, Mam. There’s likely to be some of her team here tonight; it’s sort of their place”

“Good. Will everyone be, you know…?”

“Gay, Mam? No. And do you remember Lil?”

“She wasn’t right for you, Ami. I told you that”

“You told me lots of things, Mam, and we have agreed to forget a lot of them. Lil and I are still friends, so let’s be nice tonight. Oh, and we know about those bottles”

“Bottles?”

“The Italian fizz, Mam. Not a problem. Just one question: did you enjoy it?”

The old lady looked at her feet, and in a small voice, admitted, “Yes…”

“Well, no problem, then. Some etiquette, though. There will probably be some people in the quiz calling themselves ‘bakers’. They are lovely people, but VERY cutthroat. The compere, Marlene, is very abusive, but it’s all an act. If she picks on you, think of it as an honour. And Lil will be behind the bar, and probably sit with us afterwards. Now, are you ready?”

Hira nodded, squaring her shoulders, and my wife put a hand to the door.

“Right. Let’s go to quiz”

CHAPTER 13
Amina pushed the door open, looked around for a spare table and then led us directly there.

“Drinks?”

I peered over towards the bar, where Lil already had her hand on a familiar pump handle.

“Goat’ll do, love. Hira?”

I lowered my voice.

“You don’t have to hit the booze, love, but nor do you have to avoid it. Try something soft first; we’re liable to end up on that prosecco by the finish”

“Um… do they do Coke?”

“I believe they have Pepsi, but same thing, really”

“I’ll have that, then, with ice and lime, please”

She laughed, much more easily.

“No, I haven’t been hanging around pubs, I just know what flavour bottles they sell in Tesco’s, and as a lady, I do not swig it from the bottle”

Amina was back immediately, empty-handed.

“Lil says she’ll bring them over when she’s poured”

Hira looked quickly at the bar.

“She’s worried I’ll be awkward, isn’t she?”

“No, Mam, don’t think so. I think she just wants to say hello again, see how you are. Hang on---being waved at”

Lil was already heading towards us when Scott and Omar passed our table, leaving hugs behind, and then Matt, Alicia and Clive. The girl was as upfront as ever.

“Fancy making it a team of six, Jen? Oh, hi, whoever you are, I’m Alicia, and these two are my fella Clive and his mate Matt. We’re all at Uni here”

“This is my mother-in-law, ‘Licia, Hira. First time at a pub quiz”

“Hiya, Hira! Jen warned you about the Bakers?”

The older woman laughed.

“Yes, she has. Their reputation is that widespread?”

“Only cause it’s all true. Now, have we got a team name? Hi. Lil”

Our friend set down our tray of drinks, smiling a little uncertainly at Hira.

“Hi, Hira. Didn’t expect to see you here, this sort of place…”

“Hello, Lil. As you can see, I am a little more, well, flexible than we all thought. My daughter and her wife tell me you are courting again. Showed me the holiday snaps”

I was almost in awe of her phrasing. Just two words, ‘her wife’, carrying so much import. Lil almost blushed.

“Yeah, but she lives all the way over in Sussex”

“Brighton, I suppose?”

“Er, no. Crawley, near Gatwick”

“Well, stop being strangers, then. Those two other boys, they are a couple?”

I answered for us all.

“Scott and Omar. Yes, Hira. Omar was one… you mentioned the beatings, yeah?”

“Ah”

I turned back to Lil.

“Tom and Connie have something on to do with their dogs, so he sends their apologies. Matt? On your own tonight?”

“Um, not exactly. She’s working tonight”

Lil pointed back toward the bar.

“She’s covering the first stint in the disco room, but she’ll be back in here in around an hour. Pining, son?”

Alicia snorted.

“Slightly! And you ought to see Clara, bitten SO hard, she is, always on video chats with Dishy Ishy”

Hira sighed, then grinned.

“I see I have an amazing quantity of gossip to discover and enjoy. And possibly disseminate and distribute in appropriately inappropriate ways”

Since the day I had first met Hira, I had understood exactly where my wife’s warped sense of humour had its roots. I realised the evening could indeed turn out to be a success.

When I headed to the bar for the next round, Marlene slipped into place next to me.

“That your Mam in law, Jen?”

“It is indeed. Trying to get her a bit more out than she has been”

“You warned her about stuff?”

“Yes, both how ruthless the Prossers can be, and what sort of bitch you can”

She chuckled, happily.

“Then we shall get to it. Just one thing: if I hit her a little too hard, just tug your right ear lobe and I’ll back off”

She was away to collect her mike, and I was left to deliver our drinks.

“Right, you collection of filthy perverts, you know the system: log into the app with your team names, and then bring them and your festeringly filthy lucre up to Moi. Usual rates, but you are welcome to come behind and slip me one by the bike sheds. Well, you’re always welcome to come behind me, of course. But I decide who gets to slip me one. You! Not seen you before. You’re very tall”

“You’ve seen me hundreds of times before, Marlene! Barry”

“Well, so much beefcake, so little time, so little spare room for memory. On a good day, that is. How big are you, Barry?”

“Six foot five”

“Six foot? And five inches? That’s not big; Marlene knows these things, and trust Moi, Marlene has known a lot of things, but there’s always time for more… but not always room”

I glanced at Hira, who was sitting open-mouthed.

“You okay, Hira?”

“Does she have no shame?”

“Um, none that any of us has ever noticed”

“She is wonderful! Do I call her, him, she?”

“Yes. It’s a courtesy thing”

“That is a strange word, given her jokes. How does that man feel, I wonder”

“Barry’s an old friend of hers. He probably feels honoured to have the spotlight on him”

“He is indeed a very big man, Jen”

“He’s one of those coppers we were talking about”

“Ah”

“Eyes down, look in, or up. Tonight’s quiz subject is… No, this microphone STILL doesn’t smell of cock. You lot need another team name. Tonight, in honour of that bitch over there with the beefcake, yes you, Gemma, getting Moi fucking FAT with your cakes and your creamy horns, tonight’s topic is food”

There were three sets of Bakers in, but we beat one of them, coming third, which was largely down to some astonishing throat-cutting from Hira, who had simply grinned on hearing the announcement before tearing through from one correct answer to another until there were no more. As the scores were announced, she sat back in her chair with a happy sigh.

“I enjoyed that. Pity we didn’t win”

Amina pointed at Marlene, who was approaching our table with a couple of bottles of fizz and the bar vouchers for the weekend.

“You have fucking pissed off the Prossers bringing this fucking ringer here. Yes, we all saw you, checking the recipe cards up those sleeves of yours. Never come back here again, unless you enjoyed it”

Suddenly, the other Marlene was there.

“Be welcome, love. It’s always a pleasure to see where people I love come from. If you want, I can send Lil over with some softer drinks for you”

Hira took Marlene’s hand with a smile.

“My daughters here gave me a heads-up before we entered, and I must say that you are very good at what you do. And thank you for the offer, but I do believe we have a couple of nice bottles here. Just one thing I would ask”

“Go ahead”

“How much would it cost me to slip you a list of my best quiz topics so that we can beat those Baker people?”

Marlene was chuckling as she strutted away, and as I watched her, I spotted Alwen behind the bar, serving one of Debbie’s lot; she gave me a little wave which I assumed held more than a smidgeon of vicarious gratification at ‘her’ team’ placing above Bakers.

When I turned back to the table, Hira was almost through what was clearly only going to be her first glass of fizz. Lil was chatting to Ox, and as she hung up a towel, I realised she was doing some horsetrading, but on Alwen’s behalf, for it was the younger woman who stepped out and headed for our table. Amina watched as she gave Matt a pretty full-on kiss, and then explained to Hira.

“That’s Alwen. I think you can work out where she fits in here”

“She’s very forward”

“Spent too long being backward, aye? That right, girl?”

“Shut up and pour me a glass. Bit brain dead after the disco room; no chance to talk to anyone in there, apart from asking if they want ice and a slice. Ox is doing us a favour, but if it gets busy at the end, I’ll pop back over”

Hira looked over to the bar.

“Which one’s Ox?”

“Blue hair, black vest”

“Ah. Is that a man or a woman?”

“No”

“Sorry?”

“Ox is neither. They’re non-binary. Complicated, and my feet hurt, so your two ladies can explain later. You beat one of the Baker teams, then?”

I waved at Hira, who was grinning happily.

“We brought our ringer. Rather into cooking, she is”

The older woman laughed, as happily as I felt myself grinning.

“How does that saying go? Hold my coat! I’m Hira, Amina’s Mam”

Alwen raised her eyebrows.

“How did you find the place---NO! Don’t do an Amina on me and say ‘My daughter showed me the way’. One of her is enough, thankyouverymuch”

Hira took another large mouthful of prosecco.

“The host is very good at what… she does. I was impressed at how well she could find double meanings”

I laughed out loud, saying that Marlene had been restrained, for Marlene values of that word, and Hira shook her head.

“I am well-versed in such humour, Jen. As a girl, I was very fond of a radio show called ‘Round the Horne’. There is no need to warn me bout innuendo. I had to make sure I listened to it without my parents hearing, of course, but that’s what earphones are for, is it not? Anyway, that bottle appears to be empty, for some reason. Another?”

CHAPTER 14
I did the honours with the fresh bottle, and when Ox had popped my cork, I returned to our table, where Hira was interrogating the others.

“So it is the tall man who is the baker?”

Alicia was taking question point.

“Yes, as in he is the one with the bakery, over to Cathays. Nana Deb’s his wife, and she runs a, well, a girls’ home. That’s where I live”

“Why in a---what I am hearing is ‘foster’, or ‘in care’. I don’t want to be rude unless I do want to, and at the moment I don’t”

Pick the bones out of that sentence. Alicia did her best.

“I had a problem a few years ago with my mother. Had to leave home, and Nana Deb was there for me. It’s not the same now, cause my Dad’s lovely, and, well, Mam’s gone now. I could go home, but we agreed I could stay with Debbie while I was at uni. Saves on travelling”

She waved at the remaining Bakers.

“Lots of them are with me in the House, and there’s some of them with me at Uni. I sort of know Alwen here. through college. Then there’s Gemma Cakes there, works for Frank, the baker, but I think that’s more ‘works with’ these days. She’s a patishioner, or whatever the word is. Makes fancy pastries”

“Makes Moi fat, girl. Hello. I’m Marlene. Did you enjoy your evening, and the answer to that will be ‘yes’, because this bijou pubette is my place, all mine, and Moi is easily offended”

Hira looked up, a long way.

“No”, she said drily, “I don’t believe you are”

Marlene switched her attention to me.

“You disappoint me, woman. You clearly haven’t plied her with enough of my stock, so how are you going to sell her for body parts and elope?”

I looked quickly at Amina, who was stifling laughter.

“We don’t need to elope, as we’re already married, and what would we do with the parts?”

“Store them in the ambulance until they’re needed, of course”

Hira finally lost it, only just swallowing before her laughter burst free.

“I see I shall have to come here more often! This has honestly been very enjoyable, but I suspect many of my family might not agree”

She shook hands firmly with Marlene, who asked, “Where are you from, sweetheart?”

“Grangetown girl, me. Always a worry coming over to the wrong side of the river”

“What do you do?”

“Apart from clearing up after these two? I was a district nurse”

“On a bike? With one of those hats?”

“No, a Mini, and as you can see, I can’t do hats. That’s how I met Jen here. Mind you, that was a long time ago, when she was still squeaky, and this one was off being intellectual. Amazing how much stuff you can fit in a Mini”

She fixed Amina with a little hint of a glare.

“Twice”

“Mam…”

“Told you Aston was the wrong place, didn’t I? Anyway, not for tonight. Things are sorted. Top me up, whoever, please. And what do you do, Alwen?”

“Student, like Alicia said. Another one where home, family home, is a bit difficult. I do bar work in the evenings”

Hira’s breezy manner was evaporating quickly.

“How many of you have these… difficulties?”

Alicia answered for her.

“Got about fifteen in the House at the moment, but it changes. Some of the girls have moved out, married and so on”

“This Deb, she sets limits?”

Alicia shook her head, smiling happily.

“No, that’s the point. She’s very clear: it’s our home as long as we want or need it, that’s all. I mean, I only stay----no. Saying that would be wrong. I was going to say I only stay because Dad lives down West, and I’m studying here, and travel, but, really, the girls are my family”

Hira stared hard at me, for some reason, and then abruptly changed tack.

“Where’s the place that this Gemma does her cakes, exactly?”

Hira was taking our spare bed for the night, so we shared a cab back, in silence. That lasted until we were in the front door and shedding our jackets.

“I know what those girls are, you two. I am neither stupid nor out of touch”

“Mam?”

“I remembered that name, the Nana woman, from the news. She was one of that Cooper pig’s victims, am I right? And wasn’t she involved with that rapist, the Councillor?”

I sighed, giving up a bad game.

“You are right, of course, Hira. Sorry if that blindsided you”

“Not at all. I was just worried, when I realised: had I said anything hurtful?”

“No, not at all, unless you count the number of times you demanded someone else top your glass up”

“Privilege of age, Jen. They looked happy. Well, apart from the ones we beat, of course. This Nana Deb, she’s a good woman? Now? Sorry; that wasn’t called for”

My wife towed the two of us into the living room.

“Mam, let’s just say there is no way I would ever like to get on the wrong side of her. It was another of the girls said it…”

“Which one, love?”

“It was Maria, oddly, Jen. She said Deb is the second hardest woman she’d ever met, but fuller of love than anyone else she knew”

I bit.

“Out of curiosity, did she say who was the hardest, in her opinion?”

“Her sister. Deb’s sister, not Maria’s”

“Ah. Point taken. Tom and I met her once, you know? Deb’s sister? At work”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Some kid got knocked off a moped. Nasty leg fracture, so the two of us were busy, and Traffic were delayed. She stops, gets off her bike and comes over to check on the kid, just as the car driver---”

“BMW?”

“Of course. He’s trying to get insurance details off the kid while we’re trying to stabilise him, complete pain in the arse, so she just walks up to him and tells him to move away and be patient”

I left a deliberate pause.

“Just not in those words. Tom and I just made sure our body cams were pointed away from her”

Hira was open-mouthed.

“And?”

“I think she was part way through ‘On your feet or on your arse when the Traffic car pulled up, and it was two of ours, friends. Barry and Bryn. So we turn back round to let our cameras have the full view”

It had been so funny. The man had clearly been weighing up his chances of hitting Wildcat and getting away with it (slim to vanishing) or of backing down, and he was then presented with six foot five of Barry.

“Hiya, Wildcat. You involved with this?”

“Not at all, Officer. As a soft-hearted woman who likes puppies and unicorns, I saw that this poor child had been injured, and so I stopped to see what I might be able to offer in the way of help”

The driver had protested, “I was just trying to exchange details with him”, and Wildcat had taken another step forward.

“And I was just explaining how you need to move away from the nice ambulance crew trying to clear up your shit. Yes, I saw what happened. He left-hooked the kid, and I wear a helmet cam. If I have to wear a bloody lid, I’ll use it to carry useful things. You’ll want the footage, no doubt”

She turned her back on the driver, insultingly so, and called over to us.

“The kid going to be fine?”

“Working on it, woman”

“Thanks, Jen. Let us know, please. Officer, I’ll call in at Central nick so they can secure the footage.”

It hadn’t been until she rode away, her colours now visible, that I saw Mr BMW Driver realise who and what he had been trying to front up to. Once I had finished the story, Hira softly asked how the boy was now. Shit.

“Lost the leg below the knee, I’m afraid. Driver got done for causing injury by careless driving. Points and a fine. Had a message from a little bird later, though, that he, the driver, spent a few nights in Casualty a couple of months later. And that, Hira, is who Maria thinks is her hardest woman”

My mother-in-law was away the next morning, by bus, as we finished our breakfast.

“What was that about Aston? You’ve never mentioned that place before”

“Er, Reading was my second university. I was at Aston first”

“Why the change?”

“Because I was stupid. Look, it was after Dad had fucked off to Brum to marry his cousin, aye? I was thick enough to believe him when he said I should study close to family, and he was Dad, so I took the bait, and it was frog-boiling”

“Sorry?”

“You know the old thing about boiling frogs, that you heat the water up slowly and they don’t notice till it’s boiling, and they’re dead? It was like that. There’s him and Shilti, Shitty Shilti, and they’re really pushing the cultural thing, go home on a visit, ‘home’ being Pakistan, where Dad had never actually been till he married the Shit, and there’s me trying to find my first girlfriend. I’m down the Union bar and mention that to a friend, and she jokes, says ‘Hope they haven’t got a hubby lined up for you’, and that’s when it clicks, and I ring Mam. Claimed change of domestic circumstance, dropped out of Aston, and found a spot at Reading and, um, Sandra. First girlfriend. Took a while to calm Mam down just then; she thought it was just a reaction to Dad’s scheming”

“And this Sandra?”

“Lasted three months, love. But I finally knew for sure who I am”

CHAPTER 15
I had indeed been squeaky new when I had met Hira, just settling in at the Cardiff hub as I was. I had realised early on in my training that while I was competent at driving the big box of an ambulance, I didn’t have the spatial awareness of someone like Tom, who seemed almost to wear the vehicle like a second skin. My forte was that of an advanced nurse practitioner, with extra trauma skills, so I concentrated on those aspects. It meant a lot of mixing and matching crews for a long time, but eventually Tom and I gelled.

Those early days involved a lot of humdrum stuff, some of which could turn nasty very quickly, and a great part of said donkeywork was spent following up the district nurses. Their clientele included a heavy preponderance of elderly people, mostly women, and that was where I encountered my first deaths. Hira or one of her colleagues, perhaps with a podiatrist in tow, would rock up to some lady’s back door and walk in, as was their custom, and their former patient would be cold and motionless, usually in an armchair or their bed, but a couple of times sprawled on their kitchen floor or, in one awful case, lying full length in a frigid bath.

There was nothing medical we could do, of course, in such cases, apart from wait for the doctor to come and certify death before wrapping up and removing the terminally tired. After what seemed like far too long racking up unwanted but literal body count, spiced up by a very occasional oh-shit-we-need-as-many-crews-as-possible for a pile-up on the M4, the team leaders in Central Control finally seemed to start trusting me, and I found myself doing my first pub and football crowd jobs.

They generally preferred experienced crews for those because of the risks to our staff, as there is a moronically stupid tendency among certain idiots to see any uniform as a target, the sort of knuckledragger that stones firemen trying to save a burning house, and ambulance crews are not exempt. There are also the important factors of alcohol and, most obviously, the fact that the overwhelming majority of reasons for calling us out is fighting. Once a fight has started, it’s like a wildfire, and can keep breaking out. The coppers aren’t always there as quickly as one would hope, and more than once I have had to try and calm a drunk whose target I am treating, while praying for the flicker of more blue lights on their way to join us.

I remember a typical evening of excess refreshment, at the Man in the Moon, the police only turning up after we had started to treat the victim, the obvious culprit shirtless and abusive just beyond a couple of doormen, as we now call what used to be ‘bouncers’. One of the doormen was actually a woman, and she was the one almost face to face with the arsehole. When he realised a vanload of coppers were coming up behind him, he bolted, and her leg went out in the neatest trip I have ever seen. He was nicked with extreme enthusiasm, and then a Sergeant, someone I came to know very well, brought our door person to us to ‘recount events’.

“Being an arse, Sergeant Gould, simple as. Had a jacket on when he came out; think it’s behind that planter. Might want to have a look in it. Anyway, tried to start a couple of fights inside, so we removed him. Came out here, and must have lifted an empty on the way out. That’s it smashed over there”

She turned to me, with a smile.

“This bit’s for you, aye? Newcy Brown bottle, pint, aye? Your new patient came out for a smoke, why we keep the tables here, our mighty warrior tried to brain him with the bottle. I actually heard the impact, ‘tonk!’. So he’s obviously watched too many shit films, and the bottle doesn’t just shatter like he was obviously expecting, so he’s standing like a lemon holding it when you guys turn up. We’ve just been in face-off mode. Anyway, your patient, he goes down like a sack of bricks, and I am absolutely certain he was out cold. Quantity of blood, I was surprised to see the bottle hadn’t broken”

The sergeant had his notebook out.

“Name for the record?”

“You bloody well know my name already, Mr Policeman Sir. Eve Lynn Crowther. Yes, I’ll do a statement. One of my boys has gone to sort you the camera feeds. Two of my boys will do the biz as well. Now or later, but these two need to get the victim away, I would guess”

Angie was driving that night, and she made good time to Dai’s for a bit of queue-jumping, the poor sod on our trolley turning out to have a depressed fracture of the skull, which is deeply serious shit. Angie and I took a cuppa in the canteen after we had finished the handover.

“I think you’ve pulled there, Jen”

“Sorry? Pulled who?”

“Elf. That door worker”

“Oh shit”

“I… I can drop the word, if you want. Save any nastiness”

“What word?”

She looked round for eavesdroppers, then whispered, “That you’re, you know”

“I know what?”

“Trans”

“Angie, I’ll settle this now, then. I. Am. Not. Trans. I have PCOS, okay?”

Her face paled.

“Shit! I’m--- it’s just everyone’s saying it, because, you know”

“Stubble? Can’t be helped, unless I want to spend a fuckton of money on removal, and if I had that much money, I can think of nicer things to do with it”

“I’m really sorry, Jen. But yeah, I think Elf, yeah, she’s sniffing. I’ll let you know if I hear anything”

That was a pivotal moment. Angie was clearly also assuming I was gay, and there was me, newly-minted paramedic, not denying it, which must have answered her doubts. In for a pound.

“She’s a bit butch for me, Angie”

We left the rest unsaid, and over the next few months I did more ‘backwatching’ responses, to Cardiff City home matches, where they always sang that bloody misogynistic song ‘Delilah’, to various pubs near the ground on match days, and to certain selected places of alcoholic refreshment that seemed to attract those less careful of their neighbours’ welfare, or, to put it simply, violent knuckledraggers. One of those choice establishments turned out to be the ‘Moon’. Elf wasn’t always on, but when she was, I got a cheeky grin. I didn’t mind, for while I have never been a connoisseur of the fabled Stone Butch, she was still One Of Us, and deserved a nod of recognition as a courtesy.

There was also the simple fact that with her around, I could switch some of my backwatching energy to patient watching.

We finally got to have a proper conversation on one of those evenings where one ‘body’ out of the two we were called out for is rushed off in another wagon, while our own, after some cheery badinage involving multiple instructions to ‘fuck off’, is deemed fit enough to ride in a police van cage, thanksbyedon’twrite.

“Seen you here a few times before, woman”

“Aye. Getting much more of the nasties now my feet are under the table”

“You getting any shit for being, you know?”

She waved vaguely at her chin, so I sighed, and yet again said the magic words.

“PCOS, not being trans. Polycystic ovaries; buggers up my hormone balance”

“Oh, sorry! Anyway, what do I call you?”

I held out a hand.

“Not to worry. I’m Jen; tonight’s EMT is Angie”

“Where do you do your own relaxation, Jen?”

Not subtle at all; Angie was spot on, at least with half of her suspicions.

“Not really found anywhere that isn’t for blokes only”

“And neither of us is into blokes. I got that bit right, then. We, my club, we have our own place, but if we’re ever in town, we use a place called the Smugglers. Good atmosphere, all sorts of, well, non-straights; owner has class”

“Sorry?”

“Er, biker term. Sort of means worthy of respect. Sort of”

She wrote down the address for me, but it felt more like it was done as a courtesy than as a come-on. I tucked the paper away, thanked her, and Angie and I were away to our next shout, a possible whiplash injury in a single vehicle RTC. By the time we got to the Road Traffic Collision, where the Single Vehicle had RTC’d a very solid tree, Traffic were ready with their magic breath machine, and after a quick check of his spine, I shook my head, and he blew ninety-four, where the legal limit is thirty-five, oh dear. I do love Cardiff’s night life.

I did look at Elf’s bit of paper a couple of times, wondering, and then, as the weekend came on as a weekend off, I made my way out to a rather large old building. A small group of leather bears were smoking outside the door, which put me off a little, but I remembered Elf’s ‘all sorts’ comment, and opened the front door. There was a disco pounding away to my right (bugger that), and a smaller bar to my left. That would do.

A scattering of Twinks. A tall woman in a leather jacket sitting alone as she read the paper. An entire table of Diesels, in vests and denim jackets. Two older lads slumped together in a corner. A couple of women in another corner, in much the same position. Seven feet of drag queen setting up a microphone and what I guessed was a karaoke machine. A square woman with a dark brown flat-top cut behind the bar.

“Hi. First time here? I’m Lil. Ply you with alcohol?”